If an office job isn’t your thing and you’d prefer the independence of life on the road, then courier jobs could provide a perfect opportunity for you.
If you think that you may have what it takes, check out this overview of what makes an ideal courier driver. Why not determine if this could be the career that you’ve been looking for?
The Ideal Personality
Let’s start with the basics: this is a service job, so you’ll be picking up and delivering freight throughout your day on various courier jobs. As a result, you’re going to need a pleasant, customer-friendly demeanour. You’ll be amazed how many loyal customers a smile and a pleasant manner can generate!
Being calm on the roads is also an advantage, especially given the high likelihood that things will not always run smoothly. Turning up at a job and fuming about traffic or others’ bad driving is not beneficial to your mood, nor will it make a good impression on your customers.
The key is that you really need to enjoy driving to be a good courier. Most delivery drivers will tell you that things can get pretty stressful out on the roads, particularly when you’re dealing with traffic in major cities. A love of driving and a calm personality will help you remain composed when you have to deal with unexpected road work or other minor (or even major) holdups.
Organised and Punctual
There’s more to being a courier than just driving. Whether you are self employed or working for a courier company, people trust you with their courier jobs and expect you to deliver their goods in a timely manner. To achieve this, you need to be organised – particularly when you have multiple deliveries throughout the day.
If punctuality is not your thing, then you might want to consider another career. Deliveries are all about keeping people’s goods intact and distributing them on time. You will need to be an excellent planner to ensure that your time behind the wheel is used as effectively as possible, and for that you will need to consider everything from traffic and routes to fuel and scheduling.
Good Navigational Skills
Although most couriers use Sat Nav devices today, you still need a good sense of direction if you’d like to be a driver. To fulfil a number of courier jobs in one day, you’ll need to be able to make decisions about the order of deliveries and how long each job will take. This all requires a solid sense of time, distance and direction.
Smart Phone Proficiency
Your smart phone becomes your most useful tool as a courier, as delivery companies often make use of downloadable coordination software. If you work for yourself, you’ll find a range of useful apps, which will help with route planning, delivery times and even invoicing and accounting.
If all of these skills describe your character, then you may be ready to start a great career as a courier. Whether you work for yourself or for a company, you’ll discover that the freedom of the road is a great reward for all your hard work.
Norman Dulwich is a correspondent for Courier Exchange, the world's largest neutral trading hub for same day courier jobs in the express freight exchange industry. Over 4,500 transport exchange businesses are networked together through their website, trading jobs and capacity in a safe 'wholesale' environment.
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