Well this week i had 4 job offers but don’t know if i chose right company. First turned down Lynx as 7.5 tonne owner driver, cos i thought was too risky, then Amtrak as van driver cos the pay was crap, but you could take van home with you which was temping. Then Class 2 agency work for united bakeries, nice money but sick of agencies now. So after all that i’ve ended up taking a job as van driver for Business express. Had my indution today and was gob smaked to learn that some of there drivers were doing 200 drops a day 
Is this possible?? I’m told there gonna start me on 50 drops and build me up each week. maybe i should have took the bakery job what do u think? 
Cheers
It’s a specialist skill but I’m sure with practice you will soon be up too speed. Congratulations and good luck with the new job. 
you will find that your drops will be in a small geographical area…with umpteen drops on a given ind estate or office complex…delivering 2 packages to 1 customer from different sources counts as 2 drops …have fun
you,ll get fit in a month 
Multidrop is all about planning. My first driving job was at White Arrow (now Reality) on agency doing about 70 drops a day. We loaded our own vans so the morning was spent checking all the addresses, writing them down, working out which order to do it in, and finally loading the van accordingly. The main problem I found in my first few days was having multiple drops in the same road, but not finding 2 of them until until I was in a different road. Hence all the writing down, road names & house numbers!
Good luck, it can be stressful, give it a go and see how you do. If you don’t get on with it re-apply for the bakery job!
Good luck Jaycool007
Hi jay i started with business express a cpl of years ago, and they also said they would start me off with 40-50 drops a da, but when i got there they told me to sort through the pile of goods laying on the floor with a scanner and load them onto the van, all in the correct postal codes i had 3-4 postal codes on my round, anyways the 40-50 drops i was promised turned into 80-90 drops on 1st day…and quickly rose to 180+ a day, thats how you earn your cash, by the more parcels you have on and get off, plus you also get paid for delivering catalogues, thats where the mney is as i used to do 200-300 a day to blocks of flats this is plus your deliveries of parcels i used to start at 5.30 and get out the depot at 8 ish, and finish between 6-7.30pm of a night, long days, be careful aswell, as the drops you dont deliver you wont get paid for, even though you have attempted them 
200 drops a day totally depends on what kind of area you’re delivering to.
If you’re in a Rural area then you might only be able to do 30 -50 drops per 8 hour shift. If you’re in a modern town or city with large industrial estates then 200 is quite possible.
Business Express is owned by Littlewoods and is mainly home delivery for them, with some other customers work.
I’ve done some work there through an agency. Hope you like driving LDV vans, as thats all they had where I worked (Leamington) . Did some 2-man heavy stuff down in the Oxfordshire countryside - enjoyed that. and then went there one Sunday to do some extra drops before Christmas.
The manager gave me a postcode and I had to sort through some cages to find all my postcodes. The art is setting the run up by loading your parcels so that you can find them.
My Sunday work co-incided with those very high winds about 3 years ago - that was certainly a day to remember, I had to dodge quite a few trees. People couldn’t believe anybody was stupid enough to work that day!!! Stil,l just like the pony express - the freight and Littlewoods catalogues got through that day!!
Hope you enjoy the job. Personally I prefer my current job of delivering/collecting airfreight all over the midlands and beyond.
Calv
My first class 2 job was for Nightfreight, doing 60 drops a day in a 15 tonner. Nightfreight are a little different in that they get business by taking all the nig/heavy/oddly shaped stuff that none of the other parcel merchants will - hence 15 tonner - but the principle is the same.
I used to get into our depot near Wimborne just as the 7am trunk was turning up…get my job sheets/PODs for the day…work out how to do the run quickest (easy once you know the area, because you generally do it the same way every day)…load the wagon up and leave about 8.30/9am. I’d hit Weymouth about 9.30/10am and do the town centre shops before access was restricted, then meet up with a subbie called Cecil (who later became a good friend) and offload as many drops as I could cram into his Rascal van - if it was a busy day he’d barely have room to drive it by the time I’d finished…plus I sussed out that if I met him at the far end of town I could get him to do all the out-of-the-way drops and the other end. He wasn’t daft by any means, mind…we had many a good-natured argument along the lines of “Ok, I’ll meet you at Littlemoor but I’m not doing Portland as well!” , and “I’ll take Portland off you if you take that wretched exercise bike back off my van!!!”. I digress… 
I’d get all of Weymouth off by dinnertime then hammer across the coast road to Bridport and do all the drops there by 3pm…then fill the thing back up at various collections, calling into Dorchester for 6 pallets on the way home. Usual finish was at 7pm.
It was very hard work and very high pressure - especially when I got stuff on the run which was miles out in the sticks, costing me precious time getting there and back. The art, beyond what has already been said about loading and routing, was in knowing how to put a few jobs off to the next day so you could get away with only going to, say, Beaminster, once a week - “card left by phone” was always a good one. The prisons always had a huge wait as well, so I just kept putting them down as “Ranked Up” until the TM gave up and sent them on a special because they were clogging up the warehouse. The danger in doing that is when you [zb] up and all those 4- and 3- day jobs you’ve been leaving in the yard are all due at once, along with all the Next Days which turned up on the trunk…suddenly you have 120 drops and no extra time to do them in.
I left after 3 months when I worked out how much time I’d spent risking my licence to get round…they took a van off that had been covering a side-run and gave the freight back to me, although I’d barely been coping as it was, so I drove squeaky-legal all day and brought 16 drops back. It cost the depot £50 a drop for the failed drops. I got fired for it, did them for unfair dismissal (although it was actually “Breach of Contract” because I’d not been there long enough to do it any other way) and they settled out of court. Nightfreight Central also kicked out the local bosses - who ran Southampton Depot too - and took the whole area back under central control. The look on the Head Honcho’s face when he found out was worth more than any money!!!
The moral of all this is beware…if they run it half-sensibly then fine, but if you are continually pushed then walk away sharpish. VERY good experience if you can stick it though…I learnt lessons about route planning, maximisation of hours and timing which have stayed with me to this day - even in a van it’ll be worth doing for that alone. Also, any job which you go on to will seem like a walk in the park by comparison.
which depot you running out of 
its not like tntr or dhl you will be delivering to peoples homes maybe 5 or 6 on the same road noneof it is buisness mail
i deliver the hanging garments into the depot from littlewoods, but they also do work for gus home delivery which is other caterlogues and a bit for argos direct.as well as next
200+parcels a day is morelike it and rising this time of year. they normally have 2 or 3 trailers per night from shaw depot +external trailers.but a xmas this can rise to 4 or 5
also buisness express and reality are now the same company.
jon
Thanks for all the info, i’m actualy quite looking forward to it now as i love a challenge. I thought i would give it a try for a few weeks and see how it goes, as i can always go back to class 2 work anytime. I’ve heard you can make good money from business express so gonna give it my best shot. I will be running out of Rochdale depot as a cover driver 2 start, and yes there all LDV vans I will let you all know how my week went.
Cheers
Good luck m8,but keep the numbers handy for the other 3 jobs coz i gotta feeling you’ll need them in a week or 2.
and yes there all LDV vans
Not as bad as that seems, their comfy, they handle OK and the bodys are well screwed together, pretty reliable. Admittedly they’re not the most palacial of vehicles though.
Better than a new ■■■■■■, they just break down all the time and the bodys are flimsy.
Rather you than me mate, but good luck with it!
Same here… Rather you than me bud very hard work ■■■■ that !
dennisw1:
and yes there all LDV vans
Not as bad as that seems, their comfy, they handle OK and the bodys are well screwed together, pretty reliable. Admittedly they’re not the most palacial of vehicles though.
Better than a new ■■■■■■, they just break down all the time and the bodys are flimsy.
Not a bit like their predecessors, the Sherpas, what a load of old rubbish. We had to call the dealer out so often that he got desperate enough to blame non-starting problems on the fact that drivers left the radio switched on with the engine off .
Salut, David.
after doing this kind of work for many years, i,m glad i,m finally out of it.
i hope i never have to do it again 
the catalogues can be the worst bit, you sometimes get the name of a
house and a village name no street name, also get to know where
all the new builds are going up in your area, because you’ll probably
get some of these, if you don’t see the address in the a-z, it’s probably one
of these, also when you find the address in the a-z, it’s a good idea to
jot the co-ordinates down somewhere on the parcel, because you
forget what they where when you get near the drop.
not nice having to keep getting in/out either when it’s bitter cold
the main problem when i was doing it as well was that the area was too
big ( the D.N. postcode starts at retford and finishes at hull )
in the end some days i was just speeding everywhere, not having a break
all day, and getting very stressed out, trying to do too much, so get to know
what time the other drivers are getting back in, so you can get an idea if they’re
taking the mick.
another tip is to get to know who opens up earliest on your run so you can get a
good start by going there first, where you can leave stuff if people aren’t in etc.
you also get to know which ones you can leave till another day if it gets too bad.
and that usually happens when you get one that’s very difficult to find.
anyway you don’t know if you’ll like it till you try so i wish you all the best, good luck.
I don’t want to put you off mate but rather you than me!
I’d like to think I was pretty good at multidrop (i’ve done TNT, DHL, parceline, interlink and amtrak)
I worked there once and would never work there again! (That was at the rochdale depot) They gave me 100+ drops on the first day all round Moss side, Hulme and whalley range, Needless to say I was not a happy bunny as I had only started at 10am! I didn’t get back till 7pm and had only failed 5 deliverys but still got stick from the old nag in the office!
Good luck mate and keep us posted!
P.S. where are you commuting to rochdale from?
Super Dan:
Moss side, Hulme and whalley range
All you needed was salford then you’d of had all the [zb]holes of manchester in one day
simon
I lived in salford once and lasted only 2 weeks before i moved again… Confronted a gang of hoodys sitting on my car and next day had all the car windows smashed in. As with business express things didnt go well. I left after a week to do Class 2 agency work 4 drops a day It wasnt the amount of deliveries that put me off, it was cos the first 4 weeks i would have been on a training pay of £230 pw and couldnt afford it. I’m moving back to london now this weekend, been looking at the class 2 rates down there £9+ per hour and all that jazz. Hoping to get back on Royal mail there though manpower agy now that it’s coming up to xmas. I will keep you posted.
Cheers