Exotic Courier Services - By: Norman Dulwich

If you have worked in the UK courier business for a few years, you may feel that you need a little bit more excitement in your life. Perhaps you enjoy taking your holidays and driving around on the continent, sampling the local delights as you go. Wouldn't it, therefore, be nice to combine your job with such a pleasurable pastime?

These are the sorts of thoughts that tend to run through your mind when you are stuck in a 4- mile tailback on the M1 in freezing cold drizzle in the middle of November. It's usually about the time you start to envy the longer-haul courier drivers who get the chance to see exotic foreign parts.

The images may sometimes be overpowering. You can see it all so clearly. Your vehicle pulled off the side of some rural French country road, as you take an extended and leisurely lunch consisting of the best local cuisine whilst watching the sun shine down on a local chateau overlooking a river. You may be seeing yourself chatting amicably to the locals who have absolutely no grasp whatsoever of concepts such as ‘traffic cameras’, ‘traffic jams’ or ‘congestion charging’. You tried looking up in your dictionary the local word for ‘high priority’ only to discover that it simply cannot be translated.

The good news is, this sort of lifestyle does exist in many parts of continental Europe. In vast areas of the continent traffic jams really are virtually unknown outside of the major cities, and the pace of life can be a lot slower. The bad news for the day-dreaming courier though, is that your annual holiday experience might not be a great guide to what it's like running a delivery and transport service in continental Europe.

Why? Well, there are a few facts of life that you may need to take into account.

• Those vast areas of rural tranquillity that exist in many European countries (and which, sadly, are now so hard to find in many parts of the UK) are also unfortunately the areas where not too many people wish to have goods delivered to! As a general rule, commercial courier work in Europe tends to be in and around the bigger cities and towns, where it may be a little harder to find the tranquillity and stunning views of your dreams!

• You may have noticed that, once you across the Channel, the language has a tendency to change. This can be charming on holiday and the chance to practise your language skills, but when you are trying to make a delivery it can be something rather more of a serious inhibitor.

• In large parts of Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, the winter can be at least as bad as it is in the UK - and sometimes worse. You may think that needing to deliver to Amsterdam is going to give you the opportunity to see a lot of different things, but if you are stuck in a traffic jam on the ring road with the rain thundering down on you, then you may as well be on the M1.

• If your delivery work means that you are thundering along an autoroute, autopista or autobahn, then your opportunities to sample the local cuisines may be rather limited. Some cynics say that somewhere in Europe there is a great factory churning out essentially the same meal, which is then sold in motorway service stations all over Europe - it is just called different things in different countries to make it sound like a local delicacy!

Yes, this is all played a little for laughs but there is a serious message for the courier dreaming of better things. That message is “the courier business isn't easy anywhere” – but don’t we love it anyhow!

About the Author

Norman Dulwich is a correspondent for Courier Exchange, the world's largest neutral trading hub for the same day courier and express freight exchange industry. Over 2,500 transport exchange businesses are networked together through their website, trading jobs and capacity in a safe 'wholesale' environment.

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/Norman-Dulwich/96057

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