A Belated Welcome To The New Year
It’s been a strange, and somewhat frantic, start to the new year for us here at CTV. And that kind of explains why it’s already February and we’re only just wishing everyone a Happy New Year for 2023.
We’ve had a lot on our plates so far as we’re preparing some new video content alongside our usual day-job of courier work for our parent company.
Who is the best courier company to be a subby for in the UK?
The results are IN!
If you don’t know, we ran a survey from December to January 31st asking drivers to vote for their choice of best courier company to work for as an owner-driver.
We didn’t have a huge amount of votes, possible due to the fact that we did some redesigning of the website of Christmas and our traffic dips when people take time off for the holidays.
Anyway, the big news is that one company secured a clear win when it came to votes. And the winner is…
SPEEDY FREIGHT
We think this is probably because they are a franchise operation and have many depots, so it’s likely drivers from different areas voted for their local branch. But whatever the reason, they have obviously won over a few fans.
We’ll be running another article about the survey results hopefully next week with further insights. We will also announce the winner of a £25 Amazon voucher drawn at random from the completed survey’s we received.
Load Levels in January – How Was It For You?
So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty that most people want to know about at this time of year. How much work is around at the moment?
January is almost always the ‘quiet time’. In fact it typically runs Jan-April for most people. Many drivers have reported over the years that load levels tend to improve after Easter each year, in line with daylight hours, warmer weather etc.
That seems to be true for 2023 so far.
We’ve noticed that January has been ‘OK’ in our reports. Nothing special, but also far from terrible too.
There IS work around, but not a huge amount of it.
This means rates are currently a bit flat.
We’ve been recording the small van rates (as most work this month has been smaller stuff) that our own vans have been running at;
Min: £0.80pplm
Max: £1.10pplm
Average: £0.92pplm
We saw fuel dip to around £1.54/litre at the pump at one stage, but prices seem to have risen again since. Give everyone is still having to pay incredibly high prices, a fuel card is a wise move. Every penny counts, especially when load volumes drop.
Drivers in and around major cities and more populated areas should be able to earn fairly well depending what size vehicle you’re operating.
More rural locations will always be more of a struggle, as it is at most times of the year.
Weather Report for February
Winter has been fairly kind to us so far, but we’ve just seen a headline that some Weather experts are predicting a repeat of ‘Beast from the East’ which could see some difficult conditions later in February.
So get yourself ready and try to earn as much as you can before any serious snow falls.
Get Ready For A Doctor’s Visit
In January we were looking at ways to make our video content a little more interesting. We wanted to create something that would stand out capture peoples attention.
When it comes to videos about courier work, there are plenty of videos from drivers in their vans talking about their days work.
We wanted to be different.
And that’s when we had the idea to bring in a doctor – get ready to meet Dr. Iver
Dr. Iver Van Der Warehousen is a leading specialist in his field. But we’re not telling you what his field is until he makes his debut appearance in a video THIS MONTH.
If all goes well, we’re hoping to add the first video to our YouTube channel on Valentines Day (14th February for those of you that tend to forget).
