Ynot Posted December 30, 2014 Author Share Posted December 30, 2014 Interesting revelation... Seems that, although it never actually traded as such, a new company was registered by the MD on Dec 9th... CityLink B2B... http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2014/12/30/city-link-bosses-set-up-firm-with-similar-name-weeks-before-collapse/ Hmmm... © Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImagineerTom Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 According to their published figures they delivered over 60m packages per year and had REVENUES of £300m - that's less than £5 per consignment; a crazy low figure for national delivery service. Divide the number of deliveries in to the number of vans they have and that's an average of 150 delivery & collections per vehicle per day. It's clear their business model was based on tiny revenues derived from massive volumes with zero scope for anything other than the most simple a-to-be box shifting service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yorkie Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 I attended a small electrical job recently at a house with a UK Mail liveried sprinter in the driveway, the tenant wore a UK Mail uniform and told me he was self employed. Too many people aren't being given the rights of employed people when perhaps they should be. As for courier businesses, running a small business and getting parts delivered to wherever I am (business or residential addresses) I tend to be at the mercy of whoever my suppliers choose. Only a few carriers stand out rightly or wrongly.... DPD & Interlink are my favourites because they let me know when they're coming. CPC are my only supplier that uses UPS, and their service is tainted by the usual driver- he always says 'Have a nice day' monotonously whilst avoiding eye contact, and my friends agree that he always seems grumpy. Yodel, well we've all heard about where they think are safe places and I can agree from one experience that they should be avoided at all costs. Hermes use of common sense drivers seems to work, they have delivered to my house in the evening which is fine by me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 Being self employed seems to be a little bit of a stretch; The only common arrangeement where courier drivers are not company men (or women) in company vans is franchising. A franchisee would normally be expected to be a company, not self employed. Maybe the person is using the term loosly. Franchise operation is not as common in the UK as it is in many other countries though. For example, almost all UK McDonalds are owned by the McDonalds corporation, which, on a global scale, is highly unusual; almost all McDonalds worlwide are franchises. Having lived in the UK for a bit and had surely delivery drivers stroll up my front yard to deliver their whatevers, it always amuses me back in New Zealand that courier drivers run from van to delivery point... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chelgrian Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 Franchise operation is not as common in the UK as it is in many other countries though. For example, almost all UK McDonalds are owned by the McDonalds corporation, which, on a global scale, is highly unusual; almost all McDonalds worlwide are franchises. According to http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/jill-mcdonald-supersizing-mcdonalds--britains-big-cheese-6270188.html in 2011 65% of the UK McDonalds were franchises. I doubt it's changed dramatically since. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ynot Posted December 31, 2014 Author Share Posted December 31, 2014 It's a highly competitive market though. ..... And that competitive element is driven by.......? Yes - US - the consumers. It has to be said that WE want to send our goods at the best possible price, and suppliers want to do likewise, especially if they can use low courier rates to attract more custom (eg CPC's change a while back to free delivery on ANYTHING that's ordered online). It's the 'Walmart theorem'. The consumer wants it cheap, (whilst at the same time whining if it's not anywhere near decent quality!) so the big suppliers give them just that - cutting as many corners as they can. I personally don't object to a reasonable courier charge if it arrives when I want it to, and I know when it will be delivered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peza2010 Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 Franchise operation is not as common in the UK as it is in many other countries though. For example, almost all UK McDonalds are owned by the McDonalds corporation, which, on a global scale, is highly unusual; almost all McDonalds worlwide are franchises. According to http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/jill-mcdonald-supersizing-mcdonalds--britains-big-cheese-6270188.html in 2011 65% of the UK McDonalds were franchises. I doubt it's changed dramatically since. I do remember seeing that they have been frantically buying them back though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jivemaster Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 The issue that kills profitability is delivering to empty houses. MOST UK houses are either single occupancy or two salary households so there is very little time to actually get a signature for anything. Add to that the simple time taken to deal with tower block residences, home delivery is already doomed. The industry has dropped the price til the job just cannot be done, the final delivery may take three plus delivery attempts and the guy gets less than 50p for the drop. One pyro courier already charges and extra £20 for a delivery to or collection from a home address rather than a business address. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 According to http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/jill-mcdonald-supersizing-mcdonalds--britains-big-cheese-6270188.html in 2011 65% of the UK McDonalds were franchises. I doubt it's changed dramatically since.Just goes to show, things do change! 2011, 65%. 2006, 40%. Seems that McD has changed how it does business in the UK from when I was there, which had much less than that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the kid Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 The issue that kills profitability is delivering to empty houses. MOST UK houses are either single occupancy or two salary households so there is very little time to actually get a signature for anything. Add to that the simple time taken to deal with tower block residences, home delivery is already doomed. The industry has dropped the price til the job just cannot be done, the final delivery may take three plus delivery attempts and the guy gets less than 50p for the drop. One pyro courier already charges and extra £20 for a delivery to or collection from a home address rather than a business address. Here all (or 90% of packages go to local stores to be collected. Various methods of notification for collection, mainly SMS that is sent through the tracking number being scanned in to "home". Amazon packages of a certain undeliverable size as automatically readdressed to the collection point (in this case its the supermarket for the post office, and the cornershop (more like bookies/tobacco shop) for Schenker / DHL.It does work great, as quite a large number of stores have a post counter, and will take all packages regardless. I understand that in the summer Royal Mail moved package collection to small post offices, but Parcel force is still at depot. (might be the other way round) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete McCrea Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 I don't recall seeing a city link van passed work for a long time. They did seem to be particularly useless on our patch. Iirc they had a portion of the Waitrose 'Click and Collect' deliveries to stores, so maybe out of that 60M packages a large proportion of those were to stores where they were maybe dealing in bulk - my wife's store used to get maybe 20-30 packages in one van load per day when she worked in that section. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dsharp7th Posted January 7, 2015 Share Posted January 7, 2015 City Link were Coventry based but that didn't help when deliver to an event site in Coventry, which despite 24 hour security got sent back to the Birmingham depot twice. Some eBay sellers now offer 'collect from your local Argos' and I was browsing someone selling sheet timber, it would be interesting to 'click and collect' 30 sheets of 18mm OSB from my local Argos "Collection Point A, B & C". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoyF18 Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 From the current issue of Private Eye, number crunching: "£55,000,000 - increase in wealth of Jon Moulton, whose Better Capital fund pulled the plug on City Link during 2014 5,000 - people who found out they were losing jobs as result of City Link collapse on Christmas Day" Ain't life grand at the top! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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