Van Courier Service

Dedicated van, parcel network or shared van

Three products, three price levels, three different things going wrong when you pick the wrong one. Here is the honest comparison, including the cases where we are not the answer.

• A parcel network is cheapest and is right for anything small, boxed and under roughly 30kg with a longest side under about 1.5m. Your item shares a route through depots and sorting hubs, which is exactly why it costs a few pounds. If your thing fits those limits, use one — we will tell you so on the phone.
• A shared van — the marketplaces where drivers bid — is cheap because your item fills space on a van already going that way with several other jobs on board. The headline is genuinely low. The trade is the date: the driver has to already be passing, so quotes come with a window of several days that can move, and you rarely speak to the person who turns up.
• A dedicated van courier is one driver committed to your job today. Nothing else is in the back, the driver loads and carries, and there is one number to ring. It costs more than a bid on a platform, and where you need it collected this afternoon or carried upstairs, that is exactly what the difference buys.

Where the item is big but the date is flexible and the budget is tight, a shared-van marketplace will usually beat us on price. Where the date matters, where the item is valuable or awkward, where somebody has to actually carry it in, or where you want to speak to a person rather than a platform, a dedicated van wins on every measure except the headline number. See the comparison table below for what each provider actually publishes.

How per-mile pricing works

Outside the M25 the sum is one line: £1.90 for every loaded mile between the collection door and the delivery door, with a £95 minimum that covers anything up to about fifty. Loaded miles are the miles your item is actually in the van — the run out to you and the empty leg home are already inside the rate, and there is no fuel surcharge on the end. You can check the number against a map before you ring.

Inside the M25 the per-mile rate does not apply at all: one item is a flat £55, and a local marketplace collection is £45. The entry jobs sit alongside it — a store or click-and-collect run is £55, an appliance or white-goods delivery is £55. Add-ons are short: £45 for a second person, £25 for a second item from the same pickup, and £15 per fifteen minutes after the first twenty at each end. Nothing is charged for the day of the week, the time of day or an urgent slot.

Same-day and urgent courier work

Same-day is the product, not an add-on. Where the diary allows we collect today — usually within about two hours of your call — and deliver today anywhere up to roughly 200 loaded miles. Beyond that it runs overnight at the same per-mile rate and lands the next morning. There is no urgency surcharge: a same-day item inside the M25 is the ordinary £55.

• This is the thing a shared van structurally cannot promise, because it needs somebody else's route to exist today — and today is precisely when it usually does not.
• Ring early. One van does one job at a time, so slots go in the order they are booked. A morning call almost always gets a same-day answer; a late-afternoon one usually becomes first thing tomorrow.
• We do not publish a cut-off time, because there is not an honest one to publish. It depends on where the van already is and how far your job runs. Ask and you will get a straight answer in a minute.
• Seven days, 7am to 10pm. Evenings and weekends are ordinary working time, not an out-of-hours premium.
• The usual urgent jobs are a retailer's own delivery that failed, a seller moving out at five, a part a site needs before the shift ends, or a marketplace collection with a deadline the buyer did not set.

More detail on same-day delivery, and our same-day courier guide and emergency delivery guide cover what to expect from the market generally.

Business and trade runs

A good deal of our courier work is for businesses rather than households, and it is the easiest work we do because the route and the timing are usually already known.

• Retail and showroom deliveries. You sell it, we deliver it, on your brand's timescale rather than a network's. A fixed per-mile price means you can quote your own customer with confidence before the van moves.
• Site and trade runs. Materials, fittings, tools and plant between depot and site. A dedicated van means the part arrives when the trade is standing there, not the following afternoon.
• Office and equipment moves. Desks, IT kit, display units and stock between premises, out of hours where that suits.
• Standing or recurring runs. A regular collection between two addresses is priced properly as a route rather than as a fresh one-off every week — ring and we will work it out.
• Failed-delivery rescue. A customer's item stuck at a depot or refused at a door, collected and re-delivered the same day.

Everything is invoiced, and the price is fixed before collection so it can go straight onto a job sheet. See commercial deliveries and van and driver hire for longer bookings.

What we carry, and the page for each

Every one of these sits on the ladder above. The item pages carry the detail — sizes, access, and the questions that come up most for that thing.

• Furniture. Furniture courier and delivery for wardrobes, tables, drawers and sideboards; sofa courier for two-seat, three-seat and corner sofas; bed delivery and mattress delivery for frames, divans and mattresses.
• Appliances. Appliance delivery, fridge delivery and washing machine delivery — positioned, not dropped at the door.
• Big and heavy. Large item courier for anything past a parcel network's weight and length limits.
• Shop and marketplace buys. IKEA delivery, eBay collection, Gumtree collection and marketplace delivery.
• Careful things. Fragile items, art transport, antique moving and piano moving, each of which is a different specification rather than a courier run with extra blankets.
• One thing, one move. Single item moves for a short local hop, and long distance for the cross-country version.
• More than a courier job. Small removals, flat removals, student moves and house removals when it is a load rather than an item.

If you are not sure which one your job is, ring and describe it. We would rather point you at a cheaper product of ours — or at a parcel network — than take a booking on the wrong ladder.

Where we work

We are based in Uxbridge (UB8) and Chalfont St Peter, which shapes how quickly we can get to you rather than whether we will.

• Fastest. West London and Hillingdon — Uxbridge, Hayes, Ruislip, Ickenham, West Drayton, Denham — plus south Buckinghamshire: Gerrards Cross, the Chalfonts, Iver, Beaconsfield, Amersham. These postcodes get the best chance of a collection within the hour.
• All London boroughs on the flat £55 within-the-M25 rate, whichever side of the river.
• The Home Counties — Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Surrey, north Kent and south Essex — almost all inside the £95 minimum, which covers the first fifty loaded miles.
• The UK mainland at £1.90 a loaded mile: Bristol £228, Birmingham £238, Nottingham £247, Cardiff £295, Leeds £371, Manchester £380, Liverpool £409, Edinburgh £760 overnight. A whole load one way is a van-load day rate instead — £450 to the Midlands, £600 to the North. See London to Birmingham, London to Manchester and London to Leeds.
• Quoted separately. Northern Ireland, the Scottish islands, the Isle of Wight and anything else needing a ferry booking.

Vans are matched to the load rather than the biggest one every time — our guide to SWB, LWB and Luton van sizes explains what fits in which.