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>> Its a desperate business sector. Its rumoured that DHL has not made a cent on
>> parcel delivery in the UK all the years its been operating* Thats why they all
>> want to be in the lucrative urban mail service and consolidate operations.
One which is compounded by public expectations, and the parcel companies pandering to that in an effort to attract more business.
When I started in that sector of transport, there were still a large number of regional carriers who did daily runs to specific areas, often with drivers who'd been doing that area since God was in short pants and consequently knew it inside out. In those days you'd still have a driver's mate on the busier city runs and you could shift a remarkably large number of consignments in a very short time; a hundred drops (that's separate calls not parcels) around somewhere like Derby or Lincoln was by no means unusual at peak periods but you could shift twenty or thirty of those along the High Street inside half an hour, and because of the way the system worked you'd probably got half the carriers that there are today. The driver would work his way along the street, leaving piles of parcels on the kerb for the mate to run into the shop with his sack trolley, and the only paperwork was a sheet of paper on a clipboard which the recipient would put his scrawl across, unlike the timewasting third degree interrogation of "Signature, printed name, date and time" which used to irk so many storemen. In many ways the job was far more efficient then than it is now, because there was far less trans-shipping of consignments.
After that came the fad for nationwide overnight delivery and that is what scuppered the industry. Carriers had to go with it or go under, very few of the old names consequently survive today. I've had to drive from Southwell, Notts. to New Mills in Derbyshire with one parcel before now, because it was a guaranteed before 9.30am delivery and if we failed not only did we not get paid but we were fined as well. You inevitably discovered when you got there that the customer couldn't have cared less if it had arrived next month.
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