How Long Does it Take to Get Paid? | Pete the Courier Driver

Circuit has rebranded to Spoke.com Introducing… Spoke Route Planner, formerly known as Circuit Route Planner Are you looking to start a career in independent courier driving? There are so many questions to answer. Not least, how long does it take to get paid? Well, don't worry – you're not alone. Today Pete breaks down the answer. RESOURCES & LINKS: ____________________________________________ Try Spoke for free: https://spoke.com/route-planner/download ____________________________________________ As always, there's no straightforward answer to this one because it depends on which path you decide to go down. There are different ways you can run as a courier. You can run as a local firm. You can run one of the big firms, the multi-drop firms, like your Argos, your Amazon, your Hermes. You can run on a platform like a self-employed driver, like we do, called a courier exchange. Or you can run as man and van. So to give you a quick run-through, if you're going to join a local firm: Speedy Sprint, they've all got their names. You can just Google them. They'll be in the area, you'll go down, they'll check you out: you got your van, you got your insurance; it's all good. They're all going to have their own rules. Some of them might go, "We pay weekly." Some might be, "We pay monthly." You can have a conversation. Sometimes you'll have a negotiation with the guy and they'll go, "Well, this is it," or "We might pay daily at the end of each job." You don't know; everyone is different. You can guarantee the quicker they pay, the chances are there's always going to be strings attached to these things. But they're going to do it their own way. If you go for one of the bigger firms, then you can expect to be paid in four weeks. Now, these guys are going to expect you to work. They will throw all the work they possibly can at you. You can have Monday to Friday, or to Saturday, Sunday; seven days a week. They'll throw as much work and they'll give you as many drops as they can. For this reason, I recommend, if you're going to do one of these, get yourself a decent app. Particularly to start with, when you're like a rabbit in the headlights, you really need to find out where you're going. I recommend Spoke; I think it's the best. But if this is the way you're going to go, and it is quite an easy way to go: you're not really dependent on the size of motor you've got; the different size of vans doesn't really matter so much; very easy entry; very easy access; that kind of thing. If you run as we do, you run on this thing called a courier exchange, then everyone's different. Because the way that works is it's a subcontracting network, so every person you do a job for is going to have their own rules. The job I'm doing at the moment might be for 'as fast as possible' couriers. The next job I'm doing might be for 'A to B' couriers. 'As fast as possible' might pay in 14 days. A to B might pay after 60 days from the end of the month. So one firm's going to pay me in two weeks, one firm's going to pay me in three months. And then once that three months have rolled over, it's okay because you'll be paid for Month 1, and then when you're working Month 4, Month 2's money will come in, and what keeps happening is it keeps snowballing on. The fourth way, and that's if you want to go like man and van, or if you want to go small removals, or stuff like that: these jobs often pay cash, and they often pay daily. And the way you get them is you go on Gumtree, you put your advert out, or you go on your local Facebook and surrounding areas, that kind of stuff: word of mouth from people like that. And that way, you can use that sometimes to supplement. So say, for example, you're running your Amazon Monday to Friday, or you're running your CX Monday to Friday, and you're waiting for the dough to come in, but on a Saturday, you've got a small removal job from that flat round the corner, and that's paying cash, that helps keep the wolf from the door. And of course, there is your own customers. If you can get your own customers, they're the holy grail, because they'll always pay more money, and also you can negotiate with these people. You can go, "Look, to start with, is there any chance we can have it every two weeks and I can extend it later?" But that gives you a rough idea of the ways you're going to go and how much money you can expect, how long you expect to get paid. ►Subscribe:    / @spokeapp   to learn more about how Spoke helps you to get home earlier. ►Find us on Facebook:   / spokedelivery   ►Check out Pete the Courier Driver on YouTube:    / etep3000      • How Long Does it Take to Get Paid? | Pete ...   #CourierDriving​​​ #DriveAndThrive