“ns-vans” (http://goo.gl/YykjiZ) by brx0 (http://goo.gl/FvUo15) is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Hello dears!

I have to admit, today is an entirely impromptu post (I just had to look up that word, by the way to spell it correctly). I am not the most organised person at the best of times, and I usually do not schedule what I will be writing about anyway, but in this case, the topic just appeared in front of me – and I could not let it get away.

You see, the other day, a gentleman I had not seen in a while walked into the cafe. This fellow is an owner driver and I know him socially, both from Stevie working with him in the past and from my own experiences as a courier over the Christmas period (which I still cannot believe I actually did, by the way). So after he had his bacon-and-egg bap and cup of steaming hot filter coffee, we started talking about the courier business in general. Inevitably, talk came round to my nephew, and the gentleman asked how he was doing. I explained that he was looking into joining a courier network – as I told you on my previous post – and he immediately looked very interested.

"That's a great idea!" he said. I asked him what made him say that and he said that an owner driver should have every interest in joining a set-up of this type. He added that it had helped him immensely, and told me to urge Stevie to go for it.

Of course, I couldn't just leave it at that, so I whipped out my fancy new smartphone – a birthday present from my brother's family – and made a little recording of him talking about it, so I could remember it later. By the time we said goodbye, I knew I had my next blog post in my hands. I went home and listened to the recording, and now here we are.

In our little chat, my owner driver acquaintance explained that some years ago he joined a courier network in his main area of operation, which was not yet our neck of the woods. When he decided to throw in with this group, he was already doing moderately well, enough to pull a profit anyhow. After joining the network, though, his volume of work increased significantly, and he had come onto the radar of many companies looking for employees, including a few national ones. He went on to work for one of these major outfits for a while, before deciding it was not for him and returning to the life of a freelancer.

He then went on to urge Stevie to, by all means, join a group. However, he did have a warning, which my nephew had already told me about: he said Stevie should make sure the network he was joining fit his needs, or the entire thing could become somewhat moot.

Needless to say I was happy – I now had an opinion from an actual owner driver, who had been there and done that, to pass on to my nephew. I was so thankful, in fact, that I gave him his lunch free of charge!

Ta-ra!

Gertie x