How we work
Every movement we run — an envelope across the city or a load to the Highlands — follows the same four stages. Here they are without the varnish, including the part most courier websites skip: what happens when something goes wrong.
- S1BRIEF — scoped & priced
- S2COLLECT — checked & secured
- S3DELIVER — direct & updated
- S4CONFIRM — signed & referenced
01
Brief
Everything downstream depends on the brief, so we take it seriously. You tell us what is moving, where from, where to, when it is needed and anything unusual about access or handling — through the quote forms or, for account customers, a one-line email against a stored profile.
We reply with three things: a fixed price for the job, the vehicle we would assign, and a collection window we can actually meet. If the deadline is not achievable we say so at this stage — an honest “no” before booking beats an apologetic one at 5pm. Your enquiry carries an MNA reference from the first reply, and that reference follows the job through every email, label and invoice that touches it.
Nothing is booked until you confirm. A submitted form is an enquiry, not a booking; a quoted price is an offer, not a charge. The job exists when you say yes and we acknowledge it — in writing, both ways.
02
Collect
The driver arrives inside the agreed window — and if traffic threatens the window, you hear about it before it closes, not after. At the collection point the driver checks the consignment against the brief: item count, condition, packaging equal to the journey. Discrepancies are raised there and then, because the doorstep is the last cheap place to fix them.
Loading is a craft we take personally. Weight to the floor and the bulkhead, fragile items isolated and padded, everything strapped so the load arrives in the arrangement it left. Where you have asked for it, condition photographs are taken before the doors close.
Departure is confirmed to you — the goods are on board, the vehicle is moving, and the clock you care about has started.
03
Deliver
Goods travel on the vehicle that collected them. There is no depot, no cross-dock, no overnight trailer swap — the movement you paid for is the movement that happens. On longer runs we update you at sensible moments: away, en route, approaching. If you need updates at a different rhythm — a warehouse that needs thirty minutes' notice, a recipient who must leave a meeting to accept — tell us in the brief and the updates follow your rhythm instead.
At the delivery point the driver follows the agreed protocol: hand to anyone at the address, hand only to a named person, or follow site rules — goods-in desks, banksmen, loading bays. Unloading gets the same care as loading, and where the job includes it, goods go to the room, not the kerb.
04
Confirm
The job is not finished when the doors shut; it is finished when you know it is finished. Delivery is confirmed to you with the recipient's name and the time, under the same MNA reference the job has carried since the first email. Multi-stop routes confirm drop by drop as they happen.
That reference is the spine of the paperwork: quote, booking confirmation, POD and invoice all cite it, so anyone in your organisation can trace any charge to a named signature at a real address. If your industry needs extra fields on the record — job numbers, RMA codes, serials verified — we capture them because you asked in the brief.
05
When something goes wrong
Roads close. Recipients vanish into meetings. Boxes turn out heavier than described. A courier's quality is not the absence of problems — it is the speed and honesty of the response. Ours works like this:
You hear it from us first. If a delay, damage or failed delivery occurs, we contact you before you have reason to chase — with what happened, what it affects, and what we propose. No news being managed into good news; the facts, early.
Decisions stay yours. A closed delivery point, an unavailable signatory, a mismatch at collection — the driver holds, we call, you decide. Your goods are never improvised with.
Problems get a written record. Anything that goes wrong is documented under the job's reference — what, when, who was told — which is the record a complaint or an insurance claim needs if it comes to that. The formal complaints procedure, and how liability and goods-in-transit cover work, are set out on the standards page.
And we fix the cause. A failure that happens twice is a process problem, not bad luck. Repeat customers will recognise this as the reason briefs occasionally include an oddly specific question — each one is a scar with a lesson attached.