Here we are once again. The end of another year and time to recap on what’s happened, while we look forward to what might be on the cards for the year ahead.
What happened in 2024?
The biggest news (in our opinion) this year has been the ups and downs of Yodel. As the 2024 had only just got underway there was talk that Yodel were heading into administration and jobs would be lost. The cries of ‘Oh no’ quickly turned to ‘hooray!’… but little did many of us know at that time that it would not be the end of that story.
Fast forward 8-10 months and the people (person?) involved in rescuing Yodel, via their numerous other delivery companies and a convoluted plan, have now ended up in an even bigger mess involving legal action and more company administration issues – which means this saga will rumble on into 2025 for sure.
Rumour has it that there are a significant number of drivers that have been affected by these events across multiple businesses, and if you’re one of those drivers we’d love to hear from you.
In other news
Meanwhile, Speedy Freight invested money in a new logistics operation – Speedy Fulfil and DHL opened new service centres at Cambridge and Gatwick.
There was a change of government this year. We’ll leave you to decide for yourself whether that’s been a good or bad thing. All we know for sure right now is that fuel duty has been kept ‘as is’ once again, not that it’s had any great affect on prices, which are still far too high in our opinion. If you agree, then a fuel card is one way to help cut costs (oh come on, we had to do a sneaky sell in this article somewhere).
Round-up of CTV’s Year
In regards to how our year went, we’re more than happy with progress. After checking our statistics, we’ve seen noticeable growth in visitors to our website and followers across all our social channels. We’ve received over 1.2 million web impressions and over 70k page views (up from 50k in 2023).
Take a look at our years round-up infographic
We launched the Delivery Notes Podcast and have connected with industry leaders off the back of it, and this will go a long way for 2025’s plans.
Mostly the same, but maybe a bit worse?
In general this year has been fairly average, but if anything things did get a little bit worse in our eyes.
The Courier Exchange brought out some product updates and new services, although at the same time also increased the prices once again. It’s now going to cost you well over £2000/year to be a member. Yikes. We know that all services have a price, but at the same time – should those of us that earn the least, really be having to pay so much to access work? That seems counter-intuitive to us.
DeliveryApp also seemed to make some app updates – we’ll talk about these in our new review due out soon. So far, we’re not impressed. Although maybe it’s just an issue with the way we’re using it? We’ll keep you posted.
Same Day Courier Network made big changes to their app this year, and we’ve noticed an increase in loads on the platform – but drivers still don’t seem to be fully understanding how to bid to win work. That’s not so much a platform issue, as it is an issue with lack of experience and industry knowledge.
What’s on the horizon to look out for in 2025?
Honestly, right now we’re not sure that there’s anything really amazing in the pipeline to bring hope for the new year. At least not across the wider industry. We’ve heard a few rumours of new apps that might heading into the market. Apparently even Uber is looking at providing same-day delivery services in some countries now.
We think this industry needs competition for the load-share platforms, and more ways to get customers direct to drivers. If that happens then it could change everything. The people in the middle probably wouldn’t be too happy about it, but the industry surely can’t continue on this current path forever, can it?
When it comes to our own plans for the year ahead, we HAVE got some stuff to be excited about.
Our PRO service is gathering pace. We wanted to bring it out in 2024 but we also don’t want to have people signing up to a service that just isn’t right. It’s taken a little longer than expected, but when it’s ready we’re sure it will offer more value to users.
We also have new episodes of the Delivery Notes Podcast planned and we’ll be making extra effort to get more episodes done on a regular basis. It’s extremely difficult to pin couriers down for recording sessions, but we’re hoping to encourage some drivers to stay home and speak to us during the traditional drop in work levels after Christmas. If that sounds like something you’d like to do, get in touch!
