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Courier service - exactly to the customer!

The courier service is a business that has recently been rapidly developing for the delivery of correspondence or goods in the shortest possible time - "door to door" or from the customer's door to the city of destination.

Two undoubted advantages of creating a courier service ( courier company ), which are able to attract start-up entrepreneurs to this business, are the low level of initial start-up investments and a fairly wide field of activity. The choice of courier services is small, and the cost of delivery remains high. In addition, many commercial structures prefer not to use the services of the Russian postal service - the most powerful delivery player - because of the slowness and unreliability.

Even despite the fact that today large transnational companies are represented in this market, small courier companies, due to their mobility, low prices and a more attentive attitude to each client and small orders, are able to compete with them adequately, providing even faster delivery of important documents, small parcels and even flowers. Large courier companies usually guarantee next day delivery, small courier companies, due to their flexibility, usually work within one working day.

This means that all shipped shipments will be delivered on the day of dispatch. But it is precisely the timely delivery and careful processing of parcels that is the main key to success in the courier business.

How to start a courier business?

There are several key points that should be decided at the very beginning.

First, small towns and rural areas are not very suitable for this type of business.

Secondly, decide on the specifics of the cargo you are going to work with. It is clear that the delivery of documents and the transportation of, say, medicines are somewhat different topics.

Thirdly, decide whether you need a car for courier delivery, if so, which one. It is clear that for the delivery of documents within a small settlement, it is quite possible to get by with a pedestrian courier, but the delivery of large-sized heavy parcels clearly implies that your courier company has at least one car. In addition to the actual purchase of transport, you will have to resolve the issue with the driver and payment of operating costs and parking. Although such an option is also possible here, such as concluding a long-term contract with a taxi service or hiring a courier driver with a personal car.

An important point in organizing a courier service is the presence of a dispatcher who must be available to the client around the clock. Despite the fact that the bulk of courier deliveries are carried out during normal daytime hours (from 9 am to 6 pm), delivery, at the request of the customer, can be made at any time of the day. This can be the feature that will make your courier company stand out from the competition.

In principle, start a courier business alone. At first, you will be able to combine the functions of a dispatcher, a courier, and a business owner in one person. But once the business is up and running, you will need help. Usually the staff of a courier company consists of a dispatcher, couriers, drivers, a secretary and an accountant. If your courier company will have a fleet of several cars, you should also think about your own mechanic who can serve your fleet. And if your courier service delivers heavy bulky items, then you definitely cannot do without movers.

As for the actual couriers, this work can be performed by people with relatively low qualifications or without it at all, the main thing is diligence and accuracy. So there is a clear savings in wages.

Naturally, all staff must be able to competently work with documentation, and drivers and couriers must be able to navigate freely in the city (a GPS navigator can greatly help in solving this problem).

Additional costs may arise when insuring the transported goods and obtaining a certificate for the transport of dangerous goods (in the event that you intend to do this).

Courier service. And who are the clients?

In general, there are no special problems with clients. Even in the days of faxes and e-mails, no one canceled paper documents. Banks, law firms , various organizations that send documents to clients and partners are all your clients. Manufacturing businesses that need express delivery, as well as other types of businesses that need fast courier delivery - and these are your customers. There are courier services that specialize only in the delivery of goods from domestic online stores or in the delivery of invoices of organizations. The main thing here is to convince them to use the services of your courier service.

Another idea that we have already talked about is lunch delivery to the office. You can offer your services for the delivery of meals to catering enterprises. True, according to the current legislation, in order to provide such a service, your couriers or drivers will need to have sanitary books, transport - a sanitary passport, and the dishes themselves - a safety certificate.

You can conclude agreements with ordinary stores that deliver goods to your home (this service, by the way, is gaining popularity in many cities today).

How to open a delivery service: 5 popular delivery options, tips for attracting investments, cost and profitability of this type of business.

Costs of organizing a business: from 400,000 rubles.
Payback period of delivery service: 10-12 months.

The delivery business is gaining momentum every day, as it does not require such large investments as the production of goods or the opening of a catering .

Of the pluses, one can also name the fact that it is not so complicated in organization and design.

The delivery company can provide transportation services, both oversized cargo, parcels, letters, and conclude an agreement with a company (more than one), and deliver goods of its production.

In addition to the pros, there are a number of nuances that you need to understand before thinking about how to open a delivery service.

To begin with, it is worth deciding which goods and to whom will be supplied.

For example, you can initially deliver orders to your home in one locality.

This is a good option for a beginner to start because it does not require a large number of vehicles.

And if the business flourishes, it will be possible to expand the scope of activities to the desired scale.

How to open a delivery service and what are the requirements?

As already mentioned, this branch of business is not as difficult to organize as most others.

There are minimum requirements, having dealt with which, you can open a business for the delivery of flowers, parcels, valuable cargo and other items.

Choosing a location for a delivery service office

An interesting fact:
The story of the most iconic envoy of the era of early antiquity, Phillipides, who brought the message of the Battle of Marathon to Athens, has survived to this day. He ran a distance of almost 40 km and died of exhaustion after doing his duty. His feat became a prerequisite for the founding of the marathon race.

As with any full-fledged enterprise, the first step is to rent an office space.

Where it will be located, in a large building in the city center or in a residential area, is not so important.

There are courier services without an office.

But, as practice shows, this is only at the "embryo" stage.

Indeed, with the expansion of such a business, it will become necessary to conclude contracts with reputable firms.

The absence of an office can negatively affect this partnership, and in general will cause a lot of inconvenience.

Choice of transport for the delivery service

The next, but no less important point will be transportation.

Without transport, there is nothing to do in the courier business - this is a fact.

But the presence of a vehicle with considerable dimensions will increase the number of parcels delivered.

When choosing, it is worth starting from the estimated volume of orders and the available budget.

Staff and customer interaction

An important part of organizing the idea of ​​​​opening a delivery service is finding the right staff.

It is necessary to hire couriers who will deliver parcels, and staff to work in the office.

To improve communication, you can open a hotline or a website where you can always track at what stage the order (package) is.

It is equally important to set up communication between the office and couriers, as customers who are waiting for a package will first call the office and ask what the status of the order is and how long to wait for it.

How to register a delivery service?

You can register an enterprise as a private enterprise (PE) or with limited liability (), but with registration at the tax office it will turn out a little more difficult.

Since recently, courier activities cannot be subject to a single imputed income tax; delivery business is taxed on a general basis.

But this should not affect net income, subject to successful activity.

Registration with local authorities, and obtaining all the necessary approvals, will cost about 15,000 rubles.

To open a courier service, you do not need a lot of documents, only information about the founders, the physical address of the company and its property (enterprise fund).

How does the delivery business depend on the city in which it is located?

When organizing a courier service in a big city, there is no need to provide diverse services, you can simply choose a specific area and deliver only a certain type of goods.

You can implement the following delivery service options:

• cooperation with online stores;
• cooperation with restaurants or (most often, such establishments have their own couriers);
• delivery of correspondence;
• business for the delivery of water , flowers;

If the point is sparsely populated, the delivery business within the city will not bring as much profit as we would like.

Therefore, it makes sense to engage in transportation between cities, as this will greatly expand the range of activities.

It is most profitable to cooperate with furniture manufacturing factories, transport it to the place of sale, and possibly even to the home of the buyer.

You can also do the delivery of things during the move.

For such large-scale cargo transportation, appropriate transport is needed, and not just one.

But for starters, you can try smaller deliveries.

How to choose transport to the courier service?

Transport for opening a delivery business is suitable for anyone, from a scooter to a truck, it all depends on the type of transportation.

You will not often meet a driver with your truck, therefore, with large-sized deliveries between settlements, you will have to buy a car.

The financial calculations section includes not only the cost of acquiring a vehicle, but also the costs of its maintenance, as well as the consumption of gasoline.

Gasoline consumption depends on such factors:

• vehicle condition (serviceability, mileage);
• type of vehicle (truck, passenger);
• driving style of the driver (fast, slow);
• weather;
• road condition.

Approximate calculation of gasoline consumption of trucks and cars

Obviously, the consumption of gasoline depends on the model of the car and on its engine.

But, based on the table, you can roughly calculate the difference in the payment of gasoline for cars and.

Required personnel for the delivery service

It is most advantageous to hire employees (couriers) who have their own transport.

As mentioned above, it can be either a car or a truck, or a scooter or a motorcycle, since a large salon is not needed for small orders.

For example, deliveries such as flowers or sports nutrition can generally be carried out using public transport.

For this kind of assignment, it is best to hire students, as they will do an excellent job with the task and they can be arranged on a part-time basis or pick up a free schedule.

If we are talking about large-sized orders, ranging from bottles of drinking water to refrigerators, you will need at least a minibus.

Since it will be necessary to deliver water to several recipients at once, and it is more profitable to deliver equipment, at least to several customers in one trip.

In addition to couriers, you will need an accountant, a call-center operator who will answer incoming calls and provide the necessary information (the secretary will quite cope with this task).

How to attract investments to open a delivery service?

Nowadays, finding someone who will invest in starting a business is not so difficult.

There are many sites (exchanges) for searching for investors, which they themselves visit in order to find a promising project for their investments.

Naturally, no one wants to invest in an unprofitable enterprise.

Therefore, you need to present your business plan as best as possible.

It is worth pointing out all the nuances and moments of the proposed project, identifying the benefits to the investor himself, calculating the approximate payback period and receiving the first income.

Describe in detail the services that the company will provide.

Also, the amount of investment should be clearly indicated, and a report should be provided on what and how much it will take.

The knowledge and experience of the founder (founder) of the company in this area plays a significant role.

How much does it cost to open a delivery business?

Regardless of what kind of transportation to do (small or large), the cost of office and advertising will be almost the same in any case.

to additional services , it will take from 10,000 rubles.

Regular investment

The remaining expenses will be spent on the purchase of cars (if there is a need for freight transport), wages for employees, gasoline costs, etc.

In the video below, experienced entrepreneurs talk about the features of running a delivery business:

Profitability of opening a delivery business

Before you open a delivery business, you need to understand that the competition in this area is very high.

After all, in addition to delivery services, there are many private couriers.

Nevertheless, despite the competition, the profitability of such an enterprise is about 25%, depending on the type of activity.

The company should bring income in three months.

If there is no profit during this period, this means that the company is operating at a loss.

The payback period will take about 10-12 months, subject to success.

As in any commercial activity , you should not start with something big, such enterprises often go bust.

It is possible to build a transportation empire, starting with a small flower delivery business , and expand the scope of work every year.

This will speed up the payback period, reduce risks, and profits will begin to come as soon as possible.

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Opening a courier delivery service attracts entrepreneurs because it does not require large investments and experience in this field. However, this type of business, like any other, has its pitfalls and nuances. In the business plan, we will highlight the main aspects of this type of activity.

The purpose of the project : making a profit by providing courier services to businesses and the public.

The attractiveness of a courier services business is determined by the following factors :

1. Low barriers to market entry.
2. Increasing demand for this type of service.
3. No eligibility requirements.
4. Wide opportunities for business development and scaling.

The amount of initial investment is 149,000 rubles.

The break-even point is reached on the 4th month of operation.

The payback period is 7 months.

The average monthly profit of the 1st year of the project implementation is 43,726 rubles.

2. Description of the business, product or service

3. Description of the market

Every day, many organizations and people resort to the services of courier services. Before opening a delivery service, it is necessary to determine which market segment will have to be served. Potential customers of the courier service are:

• online stores with delivery of goods;
• flower shops;
• cafes and restaurants;
• publishing houses;
• bookstores.

In the age of technology, online shopping is becoming more and more popular. However, not every organization offering a delivery service has its own staff of couriers. Most online stores resort to outsourcing, and they conclude contracts not with market giants, but with local small firms.

Flower shops are another large segment. Many of them are posted on social networks and offer delivery services. Not having their own courier on staff, they will gladly become your regular customers.

To date, there is not a single more or less large city that does not have a large number of pizzerias, cafes, restaurants, pancakes and various other catering establishments. Most likely, the owners of such establishments will not refuse to have additional profit from the delivery of their dishes to customers at home. Therefore, the courier service can provide their delivery services.

Almost all large organizations need couriers to deliver various packages of documents to some government services. An example would be the tax office. The courier from the delivery service will be able not only to take the necessary documents , but also to stand along with everyone in line. Thanks to such services, customers will be able to save their time, and you, as a business owner, will get additional profit.

4. Sales and Marketing

5. Production plan

The main goal of the project is to open a courier service and maximize its profits.

Overview of the real estate market for the selection of the optimal premises.

Requirements for the premises of the beauty elephant:

• Location: can be either the city center or a residential area;
• Room area 10-15 m2;
• Parking is desirable.

• Registration of a legal entity.

Activities can be carried out by both an individual - an individual entrepreneur, and a legal entity - an LLC.

• Opening a current account.

6. Organizational structure

Staffing schedule:

• manager - 1,
• couriers - 2-4,

The total number of employees is 3-5 people.

As a rule, the owner of the business acts as the manager in such a small company. The salary is set at 30,000 rubles. The salary of couriers is piecework and amounts to 30% of completed orders. In the first 2 months, it will be enough to hire 2 couriers, however, with an increase in customers, the staff will need to be expanded.

Responsible staffing needs to be taken into account. After all, only serious and diligent employees will help to get good reviews about the company as a whole. If you do not have experience in the provision of courier services, then it is all the more desirable to hire professionals in this field who will help you establish the whole process and organize the correct work with clients.

Before official employment, arrange a trial period of at least a week. This will help to understand how the future employee treats the client, whether he is able to provide the level of service you set.

Basic recruitment requirements:

• Having your own car;
• Competent Russian written and oral speech;
• Responsibility;
• sociability;
• Activity;
• Reliability.

fixed costs	Salary	The number of employees	Sum	Average salary per month per employee
Supervisor	20 000	1	20 000	32 822
Courier	9 500	4	38 000	25 528
Insurance premiums			17 400
Total payroll			75 400

7. Financial plan

8. Risk factors

Before you enter this business, you should know what dangers may lie in wait on the path to success. When opening a courier service, it is important to remember the following difficulties.

Have you heard of FedEx, DHL, UPS? If so, then, for sure, you or your friends used their services. Would you like to open your own courier service?

If yes, then this article will be useful for you and tell you how to do it.

Especially for the preparation of the article, we interviewed three experts and found out how to open a courier delivery service. Meet our guests:

• Alexey Prygin, Deputy General Director of MaxiPost. The company specializes in courier delivery of goods from online stores.
• Sergey Nevzorov, founder of the service Department of Logistics.
• Zhurabek Turdiev, director of the BTS Express courier service. The company specializes in express delivery of documents, correspondence, parcels up to 3 kg within Uzbekistan.

The article was written jointly with our experts and with their active participation. This made it possible to obtain detailed, more complete first-hand information about the opening of a courier service.

How to prepare for the opening?

As with opening any business, it is necessary to conduct a preliminary market analysis. The information received should include:

• Target audience, demand from its side. Who is your potential client, what services does he need, what will he expect from you.
• Information about competitors and their activities.
• Current market conditions. What niches are still relatively free and other information.

This is the first. The second is the choice of niche and services. After studying the market, you may want to develop a courier service in a narrow specific niche. Or you prefer to specialize in the delivery of certain packages, for example, goods from online stores, food from restaurants.

Investment size

It all depends on the chosen niche and the services you are going to provide. Alexey Prygin, Deputy CEO of MaxiPost:

“Costs (start-up and monthly) are made up of the following costs:

• staff recruiting;
• purchase and branding of uniforms (if necessary);
• process automation;
• purchase of cash registers (and their further maintenance);
• purchase or rental of vehicles (if necessary);
• communication (mobile, city, Internet);
• household and stationery goods;
• banking expenses (mainly collection);
• fuel (if necessary);
• salaries and taxes.

The main expenses in the "courier" are salaries and taxes.

The competitive struggle in the courier services market is going through the roof now and will only grow further, opening a new business in this area is worth it if you have good start-up investments, a “cushion” for the future and experience in this area.”

MaxiPost has the following format - delivery of goods from online stores. If you do not purchase vehicles, then investments will be required relatively small. But! You need to be ready for subsequent financial injections in order to stay in the market and continue to grow.

But BTS Express required significant investment to launch and grow their courier service.

Zhurabek Turdiev

Director of BTS Express

As can be seen from the two examples, the volume of investments can differ by several times. Much depends on the niche and the services provided. But both of our guests agree that the continued existence and growth of the company will require regular funding.

Step-by-step instruction

As mentioned above, the opening of a courier service begins with determining the portrait of the client, his needs, expectations. Based on this data, you need to decide on a niche and a specific list of services that your company will provide.

After finding out these key points, you can think about what the investments will go to, how to build the business further, what geography of service you will have.

Staff. Hiring, training, motivation, relationships

Our guest Aleksey Prygin, Deputy General Director of MaxiPost, talks about working with personnel:

The staff of couriers is one of the very first steps in organizing a courier service. To form it, you need:

Recruit couriers, having previously calculated their number and load based on the planned sales volume and sales schedule;

Train couriers by developing a training system in advance, including the ability to communicate, work with cash registers , follow the rules of cash discipline, etc.;

Develop a system of motivation and control of couriers: how will you pay them - fixed or piecework? How to calculate the premium part - based on the number of redeemed or delivered parcels? How will you control their work and nullify the risks of unscrupulous performers, which is especially important given that the courier is a financially responsible person?

The motivation system for couriers should be built based on the company's business goals. For example, in our company in the first place is not the quantity, but the quality of delivery, the percentage of redemption of delivered parcels. So everything is sharpened exclusively for this KP

Zhurabek Turdiev

Director of BTS Express:

When working with personnel, the main attention and efforts should be directed to couriers, because the courier:

• The face of the company, and he mostly communicates with customers and package recipients.
• It largely depends on him how and in what condition the parcel will be delivered.
• The courier is a financially responsible person.

When selecting couriers, we look at the following points:

• Filling out the questionnaire. Is it full to the end? If yes, then this indicates a serious attitude to the candidate's work and that he wants to work in our company.
• Ability to communicate. Is the person easy to contact, not aggressive or rude.
• Age and driver's license. Only young people work as couriers in our company.

We have a month of probation. During this period, we pay attention to other indicators of couriers:

1. How does the courier handle documents? Is everything filled out on time? Are reports submitted on time?
2. Compliance with set schedules.
3. Ability to communicate with customers and recipients of parcels.
4. Feedback from customers and employees. If the courier is rude, breaks the rules, customers and employees complain about him, then such a person does not stay with us.

We also have a system of training and adaptation. It allows the beginner to quickly join the business and successfully complete their tasks.

A separate conversation is motivation. We need purposeful people, and we promote them to higher positions, if, of course, the employee has a desire.

The basic principle of building relationships with couriers, and with all employees of the company, is to let them know that they are valuable and that their work is important not only for the company, but also for customers and society. And the most important thing is not just to make it clear, but to prove it in practice day after day.

At the initial stage, it is better to focus on attracting and high-quality service of the Nth number of first customers. I would recommend starting with 200 clients. This approach will allow:

1. identify weaknesses in your business and eliminate them,
2. understand the expectations and needs of your customers,
3. build your marketing strategy based on the feedback received.

Promotion channels may be different. You need to take into account the specifics of your niche and focus on customers.

Zhurabek Turdiev, director of BTS Express says:

In our case, SEO works well, sending commercial offers to organizations, word of mouth. We mainly use social networks to collect feedback.

In choosing a promotion channel, you need to proceed from the characteristics of customers. Namely, to know:

• Through what channels of communication can they be reached.
• Through which channels potential customers are already looking for information about you.

The niche and services provided by your courier service play a major role in deciding where to place your office and warehouse.

For example, food delivery from restaurants does not require a warehouse, because the parcel is delivered straight from the kitchen to the recipient. A similar situation is with the delivery of parcels within the city, because. delivery is carried out within a few hours.

But in the case of long-distance delivery, the presence of a warehouse is mandatory.

Zhurabek Turdiev

Director of BTS Express

When choosing a place, we took into account the following criteria:

• Convenient location for customers, because some of our clients come to the office to send a package. Also, some recipients pick up the parcel from the office. This is an economy rate with pickup from our offices. The main thing is that it is convenient for customers to drive up to us, it is easy to find us, and that there is parking.
• The proximity of the airport, because To increase the speed of delivery, we send parcels to remote cities by air.

Sufficient space for the work of all departments (reception, warehouse, administration). This applies only to the central office in Tashkent. Offices in the regions are simpler

Documentation

The courier service can be registered as an LLC or an individual entrepreneur. LLC is convenient for the following:

• Investors are more willing to invest in a business, because can act as co-founders. Banks are also more willing to lend.
• More trust from organizations. It matters if organizations are your potential customers.

IP has the following advantages:

• Easy to register.
• You can pay taxes on the "simplified". Tax reporting is easier.

The choice of legal form is at the discretion of the business owner. Company registration is one of the easiest steps when opening a courier service.

Opening checklist

Is it profitable to open

To answer this question, consider the following:

• Courier service as a business is a long-term business project. There is no quick way to "make money" here. Like factories, courier services do not give a return immediately, but after a while. Starting a courier business, you need to be ready for a marathon, not a sprint.
• Much depends on the chosen niche and the services provided, the situation on the market.

Alexey Prygin, Deputy General Director of MaxiPost:

Services in general are rarely a high-margin business in themselves, and in an unfavorable scenario (and now this is exactly the case), the difference between the tariff and the cost tends to zero. It is very difficult to increase this gap: to raise the price means losing customers, and it is very difficult to reduce the cost.

Zhurabek Turdiev

Director of BTS Express

We were able to reach operating profit only in the fifth year of development. There is still time until full self-sufficiency. The proceeds are invested in development. Courier services are a long-term business. You need to have a fair amount of patience to raise such an enterprise.

seasonality

As in a number of industries, there is seasonality in the courier business. It is associated with the period of commercial activity of the population before significant holidays and other events:

• New Year
• February 23
• March 8
• Black Friday, etc.

Alexey Prygin

Deputy General Director MaxiPost

The courier business is subject to seasonality, which directly depends on the surge in sales in online stores. The hottest season for courier services is New Year's . Even if you live from order to order for a whole year, you won’t be bored from the end of November. Our people will never stop buying gifts for this holiday, so there is always a chance to make a good turnover in one month. December is guaranteed earnings. And then there are February 23rd, March 8th, black Fridays, Cyber ​​Mondays, preparation for school in August and a bunch of all sorts of more or less successful seasons and sales that provide couriers with a reliable income.

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Organizations daily need to send correspondence, goods and cargo using couriers. Therefore, debutant entrepreneurs are thinking about how to open a courier delivery service, bypassing the existing "pitfalls". In addition, to open and develop such a company does not need huge financial investments.

Existing services do not fully satisfy the demand for goods delivery services, therefore, such a business is a sought-after direction for novice merchants.

Often the delivery of goods by mail occurs with long delays. Good money is charged for urgency. Many begin to look for such a service, and some are thinking about how to open such a business.

Creating a company for the delivery of goods: the first steps

If you are a law-abiding entrepreneur, then you must follow the order in starting a business:

• initially it is necessary to open and visit the tax authority for the official registration of the delivery company;
• then - a bank in order to open a current account of its own service.

This concludes the basic legal formalities for business. The next stage is the solution of material issues, without which it is impossible to open a delivery company:

• office;
• equipment: computer, telephone, car;
• advertising.

The ideal office is its own space. If you do not have enough money to buy, then use the lease. To open a delivery establishment, it is not necessary to look for an office in the city center.

Without technical support, a courier company will not be able to work. Computers, telephone and Internet connections, vehicles are needed. You can use your own car or rent.

But it is impossible to open or organize a profitable delivery business with one car. Several cars, mopeds, scooters or bicycles are needed. The latter will be useful during daytime traffic jams. An excellent solution is to hire couriers who have their own vehicles.