The Best and Worst Transport Contracts

If you are working in the haulage industry, whether you are an owner operator or a salaried employee, you’ll know enough about transport contracts to know that no two jobs are the same. You’ll have had jobs where everything went right, and loads that you simply couldn’t wait to be rid of.

Sometimes it is hard to foresee which one will turn out to be unpleasant until you’ve signed on the dotted line – other times, the signs are there from the outset that there is going to be trouble! Of course, there are also the dream jobs where a company treats you right, pays you well, and you have a straightforward, stress free drive to your destination and back.

But while it may not always be possible to know whether a job will be heaven or hell before you take it, there are a few common characteristics of good and bad transport jobs…

A Good Job Means…

You’ll be working with a decent company that takes care of its drivers, issues professional transport contracts, pays a decent wage and legally complies with all the necessary industry regulations. If they are providing the vehicle, it will be well maintained. They will give you clear instructions, communicate with you in a coherent fashion, and the loading and unloading process will be nice and smooth. There’s nothing worse than wasting time sitting around waiting to load or unload!

On a good job, you’ll have a secure load that isn’t fragile, and that is evenly weighted so that it doesn’t cause problems with your vehicle’s handling. An ideal job will give you plenty of opportunities to pick up backloads for your return journey, and might even have one of these built into the contract. Another final little perk is to be given a scenic route to drive through – spending your whole day on the road is made more enjoyable if you’ve got some decent scenery to look at along the way!

A Bad Job Means…

Above all else, if you’ve got an unpleasant job it is usually because your employer isn’t up to scratch. Their transport contracts will be filled with small print that is seemingly designed to make your life a nightmare. If they provide a vehicle, it’ll be poorly maintained and potentially dangerous to drive. They will be difficult to deal with, and there will be endless delays and huge amounts of paperwork every step of the way.

You’ll be dispatched to the middle of nowhere with unclear instructions and no chance of picking up a backload on your way back, and the load you’ve got will be poorly secured and liable to shift around and break along the way. If you are sent abroad on a nightmare job, you’ll be sent somewhere with overzealous police and complicated regulations to comply with. The entire job will be time consuming hassle from start to finish, and to cap it all off, they will be late paying you once you do finally finish your work!

Every haulage worker will have to deal with good jobs and bad jobs – but if you learn to recognise the signs of good transport contracts, you’ll have a much better chance of picking up the right kind of jobs!

Lyall Cresswell is the Managing Director of Haulage Exchange, the leading online trade network for the road transport industry across the UK and Europe. It provides services and transport contracts to buy and sell road transport and freight exchange in the domestic and international markets.

The Outfits Would Have To Go

Some of the outfits Carrie wears in Sex and the City are quite outlandish. Huge puffball skirts, origami folded jackets and Dolce and Gabbana dresses are all featured on the hit series. Most of these are far too expensive to wear on self-employed courier jobs and a lot of the dresses wouldn’t even fit in the white vans they’re that big. Who can forget Carrie’s stunning ballerina dress that she wore in the final episode of the series? She wouldn’t have even been able to close the van door, let alone made a delivery wearing that. Plus the lads down the local diner would have teased her relentlessly about her outfit choice, which brings me to my next point….

The Fancy Restaurants Would Be Swapped For Motorway Service Stations

The Sex and the City girls are always meeting for lunch in fancy restaurants and this is something that would definitely change if they were couriers. After a long day carrying out self-employed courier jobs, we don’t want to end up at a restaurant that charges us above the odds for a minuscule meal. There’s nothing like stopping off en-route for filling pub grub and a bacon butty. God knows, some of those girls certainly look like they could do with a half decent meal.

Have you ever seen the Girls Drive?

Apart from when Carrie rents a car to take Samantha and her to San Francisco and almost manages to crash it while getting out of the rental office, have you ever seen any of the girls drive? They travel everywhere by taxi and this just isn’t practical for those delivering packages on self-employed courier jobs. New York cabs are expensive and so for that matter are London taxis. Sometimes I can be driving for hours on one courier job and if I were to forgo the van and bill the client for my taxi fare, the cost would be just astronomical.

High Heels Make Self-Employed Courier Jobs Impossible

We all know the real reason the girls take taxis everywhere….their shoes! If Carrie’s high-heels make walking the streets of the Upper-East side impossible then imagine how she would get by driving in them. A recent study in the UK showed that 11.5 million women are putting their lives, and the lives of others, in danger by wearing inappropriate footwear whilst driving. High heels weren’t designed with driving in mind and as we can’t imagine ever seeing Carrie wearing a pair of flat shoes, this rules her out as a potential courier.

Carrie might not make a great courier, but Miranda and Samantha would both fare well with self-employed courier jobs. Miranda’s brusque and efficient manner would allow her to deliver packages in an organised and timely way. Whilst, somehow we all know that Samantha would get around the quickest.

Lyall Cresswell is the Managing Director of Courier Exchange, the world’s largest neutral trading hub for the Sameday courier and express freight exchange industry. Over 2,500 transport exchange businesses are networked together through their website, trading self employed courier jobs and capacity in a safe ‘wholesale’ environment.

Toads on the Roads

The small town of Forge Dam near Sheffield is an important breeding area for the common garden toad. Whilst carrying out courier jobs in the area, you will see numerous toad crossing signs that dot the Whitely Road, and never is this area more prevalent than from mid-February to March. This is breeding time for these randy reptiles and hundreds of toads cross the road to reach their ancestral breeding ground during this period. The Wildlife Trust has recognised the area as nationally important. Froglife is an organisation that recognises the importance of the area and has placed regular patrols on the Whitely Road. The members all don bright yellow jackets and warn upcoming vehicles to slow down, whilst guiding the toads across the road.

Beware of the Badgers

Those carrying out courier jobs between Inverness and Nairn on the A96 should be prepared to bodge that badger! Badgers account for 25% of all road deaths and this problem seems to be more prominent in certain areas of Scotland. The Scottish Natural Heritage has set up a Think Badger campaign following reports that 24 badgers were killed on a single stretch of road. The majority of these deaths took place in the months of February and August and over half of them took place in the Petty Church area of town. Due to these statistics, drivers are requested to be extra vigilant if travelling this route by night.

Honk for Hedgehogs

Why did the hedgehog cross the road? To see his flat mate! Hedgehogs have long been the butt of jokes concerning road safety, and perhaps it was for this reason that the government choose this cute critter to front its road safety campaign. In many areas, hedgehogs can become an issue on the roads and the British Hedgehog Preservation society has spent many years campaigning for the introduction of hedgehog tunnels and hedgehog bridges. These may have helped reduce the number of hedgehog road deaths in recent years, but areas such as Priors Hardwick in Warwickshire are still campaigning for drivers to reduce their speed the old fashioned way with the introduction of hedgehog crossing signs.

Give Owls at Hoot

Whilst hedgehogs account for 29% of all road deaths, they are closely followed by barn owls at 25%. The Barn Owl Trust is campaigning for 10 foot trees and shrubs to be planted around the side of main roads so that the owls have something to fly over. The number of barn owls has dropped by almost 70% from the same number in the 1930s. Whilst the use of intense farming procedures is partly to blame, over half of all barn owl deaths are thought to be as a consequence of main roads. The problem is so bad that a recent study found that during the nesting period, which runs from March to August, all adult barn owls living within 0.3 kilometres of a main road are certain to be killed. This shocking statistic is a warning for those carrying out courier jobs to be aware of their surroundings and try to avoid using excessive speed in areas where barn owls are present.

Lyall Cresswell is the Managing Director of Courier Exchange, the world’s largest neutral trading hub for the Sameday courier and express freight exchange industry. Over 2,500 transport exchange businesses are networked together through their website, trading courier jobs and capacity in a safe ‘wholesale’ environment.