# Courier driver France



## philthompson23

Hi there 

has anyone any experience or knowledge on being a courier driver in France ?

phil


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## EuroTrash

Devenir auto-entrepreneur livreur de colis : mode d'emploi


L’activité d’auto-entrepreneur livreur est en plein essor. Pour devenir auto-entrepreneur livreur, il faut respecter une réglementation bien précise. Revue.




www.legalplace.fr




may help.
You have seen the price of fuel here haven't you???


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## BackinFrance

EuroTrash said:


> Devenir auto-entrepreneur livreur de colis : mode d'emploi
> 
> 
> L’activité d’auto-entrepreneur livreur est en plein essor. Pour devenir auto-entrepreneur livreur, il faut respecter une réglementation bien précise. Revue.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.legalplace.fr
> 
> 
> 
> 
> may help.
> You have seen the price of fuel here haven't you???


The price of fuel and the return to self employed drivers, which is currently negative or close to negative, is what is fuelling (see, I even managed a pun in English) current demonstrations by lorry drivers in France which are also set to worsen. I doubt you can find employment as a courier driver where the employer pays the cost of fuel.


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## EuroTrash

When I first went freelance in the UK in the 90s, I used to work occasionally for Feenix couriers in Leeds. They had plenty of drivers and you could pretty much turn up for work when it suited you and wait your turn for the next job, so if I didn't have enough freelance work lined up to pay the bills that was what I did. It wasn't like work, you spent half the time in the drivers' room drinking coffee and watching TV and having a good craic with the other drivers, then when it was your turn you went out for a nice drive out somewhere, it was pot luck whether you got a parcel going two miles down the road or to the other end of the country but in those days I used to love driving so I didn't really care. Then after you'd done that job if you wanted another one you came back and repeat. The good points for me were that it was flexible and it was a good laugh, but objectively the overheads were high and the work wasn't guaranteed. The drivers with families to support used to put in in a heck of a lot of hours, they practically lived there.

I don't even know if that model exists in France. I don't think I've ever seen a courier office like the ones you used to get in the UK. Maybe they exist in big cities. But then for local deliveries how do drivers compete with bicycle or motorbike couriers, and for national deliveres, well since France is so much bigger than the UK, would it even be feasible to try and offer a nationwide courier service when the distances can easily be too far for a courier to drive there and back in a day, it would be quicker and cheaper to use La Poste. 

Then in the UK you also have "parcel delivery services" like Hermes, DPD, Yodel, UPS etc, but to me that's not the same as a courier. And again I don't know how many parcel delivery services there are here in France. I order a lot of stuff online from various suppliers and it near enough always gets delivered by La Poste.

Sorry to ramble on (yet again) but you might find something in there worth thinking about. I'm actually quite interested in this because driving jobs were always one of my fallbacks when I couldn't think what else I wanted to do, I drove for the NAAFI in the holidays when I was a student, I mini-cabbed in London for years in my 20s and then I was a motorcycle courier briefly until I fell off, and I even thought at one time about doing HGV training. So it was knda natural to go back to courier-ing later in life for a top up income and I wouldn't even rule out being tempted to do it again. Although probably best not because I don't think I have the stamina any more, and you definitely do need stamina.


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## Clic Clac

EuroTrash said:


> You have seen the price of fuel here haven't you???


Cheaper than in England. 😉

Touching 2 Quid a litre over there. 

I started to write 'Gallon' . Those were the days, my friend.
(We thought they'd never end. 😅)


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## EuroTrash

Clic Clac said:


> Those were the days, my friend.
> (We thought they'd never end. 😅)


Oh my friend we're older but no wiser...

I paid over 2€ a litre for DIESEL in Saint J today.
'Im in Wales bought his first two-quid plus petrol at the local village pump last week. Trouble is their pumps don't go up to £2 a litre so what they've done is priced it at the pump at £1.02 and put a notice saying that the actual cost is double. So he put in what the pump said was £15 worth, and handed over £30 for it. 
The lady who runs the petrol station says she's ordered new pumps. I don't think I would have been able to resist saying, Rather than buy new pumps wouldn't it be cheaper all round to cap the price at £1.99?


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## conky2

Clic Clac said:


> Cheaper than in England. 😉
> 
> Touching 2 Quid a litre over there.
> 
> I started to write 'Gallon' . Those were the days, my friend.
> (We thought they'd never end. 😅)


Those were the days my friend,
we're in the holmesdale end...........


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## BackinFrance

Diesel is just over 2 euros a litre pretty much everywhere in France. And of course on the increase.


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## Poloss

philthompson23 said:


> Has anyone any experience or knowledge on being a courier driver in France ?


One problem I encountered was that travel time from home to courier depot is included in total daily professional driving time permitted by French legislation.
It was 2 x 40 minutes for me so there weren't enough working hours left to complete the delivery circuit.
No public transport was available, moving home to be closer to the depot was out of the question ...


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## EuroTrash

Poloss said:


> One problem I encountered was that travel time from home to courier depot is included in total daily professional driving time permitted by French legislation....


Was that as an employee and for driving a vehicle over 3.5T?
I don't know if this legislation would apply to a self employed courier using their own car or small van. It might, but I would have guessed not.


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## eairicbloodaxe

EuroTrash said:


> When I first went freelance in the UK in the 90s, I used to work occasionally for Feenix couriers in Leeds.


You might have picked up from/delivered to me, then, ET! My company used Feenix a lot back then.

Kind regards



Ian


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## EuroTrash

Small world innit!


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## Clic Clac

eairicbloodaxe said:


> You might have picked up from/delivered to me, then, ET!


You would have known ET.

She was the conscientious one who always through the parcels underarm. 😊


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## EuroTrash

Clic Clac said:


> You would have known ET.
> 
> She was the conscientious one who always through the parcels underarm. 😊


Not when the clients were looking though.
I did once drive off with a couple of packets of artwork on the roof - looked in the rearview mirror as I set off and saw them sliding gracefully down the back of the tailgate. Unfortunately the client did see that. I do hope that wasn't @eairicbloodaxe. (You weren't a photography studio on Kirkstall Ind Est were you???)
Funny how embarrassing moments like that stick in your memory.


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## Clic Clac

EuroTrash said:


> Funny how embarrassing moments like that stick in your memory.


... only when certain folks 🙉 remind you. 😚


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## eairicbloodaxe

EuroTrash said:


> Not when the clients were looking though.
> I did once drive off with a couple of packets of artwork on the roof - looked in the rearview mirror as I set off and saw them sliding gracefully down the back of the tailgate. Unfortunately the client did see that. I do hope that wasn't @eairicbloodaxe. (You weren't a photography studio on Kirkstall Ind Est were you???)
> Funny how embarrassing moments like that stick in your memory.


That would be NDP photography in Kirkstall, I think?

We were Black Hole in Armley, later on at Rodley Studios.

Kind regards


Ian


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## Poloss

EuroTrash said:


> Was that as an employee and for driving a vehicle over 3.5T?
> I don't know if this legislation would apply to a self employed courier using their own car or small van. It might, but I would have guessed not.


The job was a CDI contract picking up cheques from credit agricole banks in departements 07 and 43 after closing hours with a standard company car in the mountains where distances are measured in time rather than kilometers.

That was over 15 years ago; with the phasing out of cheques, I imagine the job no longer exists


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## EuroTrash

eairicbloodaxe said:


> That would be NDP photography in Kirkstall, I think?
> 
> We were Black Hole in Armley, later on at Rodley Studios.


Thos names sound familiar!



Poloss said:


> That was over 15 years ago; with the phasing out of cheques, I imagine the job no longer exists


I was thinking the same about a lot of the items I used to courier. The work that used to be our bread and butter, simply won't exist any more. Well over 75 per cent of it was artwork and legal documents which would all be sent electronically now.

There used to be a Friday morning job in Leeds city centre that consisted of transferring legal documents between solicitors. We did a lot of one off jobs like that all week but on Friday mornings there was so much of it that the controllers used to wait until all the jobs had come in and then batch them up and give them all to the same driver. I imagined a lot of the documents were property completions because solicitors seem to like completing on Fridays but probably they have other end of week stuff too. All the offices were in the same part of Leeds so you could park up and stroll from one to another to another to another picking envelopes up and delivering them. There would be 20 or more items, at £2.20 per job, and even if it took a couple of hours, £20 an hour in the 90s with no petrol expenses,wasn't bad going. Mind you it tied your brain in knots working out what order to do all your pick ups and drop offs in so that you didn't keep finding yourself going back on yourself.


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## conky2

Clic Clac said:


> You would have known ET.
> 
> She was the conscientious one who always through the parcels underarm. 😊


So that would be ET bowling underarm from the Kirkstall Lane end........


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## Clic Clac

Clic Clac said:


> You would have known ET.
> She was the conscientious one who always *through* the parcels underarm. 😊





conky2 said:


> So that would be ET bowling underarm from the Kirkstall Lane end........


She probably *threw* a 'bouncer' at me for falling foul of the predictive text.

I'm normally with the grammar police. 😲


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## BackinFrance

Clic Clac said:


> She probably *threw* a 'bouncer' at me for falling foul of the predictive text.
> 
> I'm normally with the grammar police. 😲


Things change


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