courier driver

delivery driver

courier

van driver

warehouse worker

Yodel

My first point is to really think about this before you start, think about the fact you have to take out of the wages you earn every two weeks,  your petrol, the cost of having a work mobile phone (buy a cheap phone before you start this job or you will have customers calling your personal mobile any time of the night and that isn't fun believe me, especially when Yodel gave them that number without my permission by mistake), stationary, national insurance contributions, tax (if you earn too much) and the cost of any repairs of your vehicle. Also, they deliver your sacks to your door, make sure you have an adequate space for sorting parcels.

I just did my tax return for 2013/2014 and I'm at a loss of £133.40. Due to my car having to have a new exhaust, tires, replacement door lock and steering wheel ignition lock.

Saying that though ironically I love my job! This job has taught me that I'm a real people person, it has polished up my years I gained doing customer service behind a desk but this time in a proper face to face situation. I will warn you that 'YOU ARE THE FACE OF YODEL!'. What I mean by this is that you are the first person they WILL complain too when they cannot get hold of or not bothered to try contacting Customer Services as a neighbourhood courier you do have to leave a mobile number for contact. 

Also if you apply for a neighbourhood courier you will be given a postcode area to cover and can ask for as many as you want (think as a start the max is 3) providing you can handle the amount of parcels. I do two postcodes which daily was about between 20 - 40 a day through the summer months, from October till end of January its 80 - 150 and from February till about May 40 - 60 parcels daily. Parcels vary due to your location. You get paid per parcel you deliver or per collection you make. If no one is in you have 3 attempts to deliver BUT you will only get paid on that parcel the day you deliver it to either the customer address, a neighbour or a change of address providing it's in your area only. It's 40p a collection and then general parcels range from 50p to 70p depending on 24hr, 48hr or 72hr delivery time.

When you get your mobile make a message up for customers detailing your hours of work or you will get calls at stupid hours of the day. My customer's know that when I finish work I turn my work mobile off but ask them to leave a message so that I will then check my mobile for messages and use any information left for the next working day or contact if required. I tend to text back as I then have a written record of anything I have said as proof if required. My local depot know that they can get hold of me on my personal mobile at other times of the day if they have a query outside of my route hours.

My day consists of getting up at 7am and putting empty sacks and returns (inside empty sacks) outside awaiting for the Yodel Van to come. He can arrive anywhere between 7.15 and 8am. They used to come at stupid times of the day to drop off but this has all changed now as a lot of couriers complained. Whilst I wait for the van man, I log into my pda and load up that day's work and re-write my parcels list into a route list (I buy an A5 hardback note book for this purpose, pens and highlighters). Once parcel's have arrived, I then scan each parcel, place it into a zone pile and then put in route order before loading it into my car. Everyone has their own method of working but this suits me and then I go out and deliver. I can deliver between 15 - 20 parcels an hour on a good day and between 10 to 13 on a bad one. You will be a lot slower when you first start but this is because your getting to know your route. They also supply drop cards and necessary yodel stationary free of charge.

A typical day as a package sorter would involve setting up the equipment upon arrival and then settling down with a cup of tea or coffee waiting for the first trailer to deliver the batch of parcels. Once the trailer arrives, it's time to get to work. The previously set up conveyor belt is fired up and everyone assumes their positions. The 'tipper' (person loading the parcels from the trailer onto the conveyor) starts unloading the parcels off the trailer feeding it down to the 'scanners' and 'sorters'. As a sorter, it is your job to identify the postcode after it has been scanned into the system, and take it from the belt (assessing the weight and carry method first, health and safety!) and taking it to the corresponding cage which had been marked with a route number and a their assigned postcodes. This is the most-part of the job apart from identifying bulk items (heavy and large packages that aren't fit for route carriage) and sorting them into a different 'bulk route' and also weeding out bad addresses and missorts and alerting management of any damaged or broken goods.
I learnt a great deal about efficiency and team work whilst being a package sorter myself. I saw how a weak link may affect overall performance but I also saw how efficient a team can be whilst firing on all cylinders. A joke or two is must at these hours for morale, so it wasn't a job done in silence. Night managers like to get their hands dirty too if they feel there is a rush or overload. Other managers I was not directly associated with were always dotted around the warehouse also so they were always in sight if needed, sporting their orange day-glow jackets, differentiating themselves from our yellow day-glow vests.
If a co-worker is lazy, it can become quite frustrating as it's easy to identify when someone isn't pulling their weight. However, most of the time this is not the case. Everyone has their off nights, and this requires some understanding on your behalf.
The hardest part of the job is really gaining the tacit knowledge of the warehouse and learning where everything is in relation to taking the full cages to the corresponding vans designated to a certain route. Not knowing this can lead to pushing a heavy cage from one end of the warehouse to the other, whilst everyone smirks as they realise you've made one of those newbie mistakes.
The most enjoyable part of the job was likely the sense of completion and fulfillment when the last package is sorted of the morning. You get a real sense of the end of the shift nearing as you watch the sun rise through the open warehouse shutter doors, so much as you can tell the time to how bright the sun is.

If I could give 0 stars I would. This was the most diabolical 4.5 months of my life. There is literally NOTHING POSITIVE about this job in particular the management (or so they call themselves). 

My contract was terminated because I took agreed time off. Yep read that again!

We are in 2019 and you don't even get provided a computerised navigation system. Nope, you have to work the route out yourself (which takes almost an hour before you even start the work you will get 'paid' to do), I was sold the idea that it would take me 4-5 hours to delivery 80 parcels - I never took breaks, I was really quick and it took me on average 8 hours because I was delivering to a lot of businesses in congested areas. 

NONE of this is taken into account. Your expected to deliver everything even if that means working until late at night. 

The staff only communicated with me if there was a problem, and when I gave them the info they needed or fixed it, they disappeared off the face of the earth. They were rude, condescending and in the end, the 'manager' sent me an e-mail, that if I reported it, he would be fired it was that bad. He made light of mental health issues and made it very clear that he sees delivery partners as the scum of the earth. 

After driving to pick up the parcels, the time it took to sort out the parcels, planning my route + actually carrying out the deliveries I wasn't even earning £5 an hour not to mention the wear and tear on the car. 

The workplace culture is the most depressing, negative place I've ever experienced. Almost everyone in the office is miserable and they treat the drivers like they are rubbish. It's clear they think they are better then everyone else. 

There was NOTHING enjoyable about this job. It was a lot of work, so much concentration being on the road 8-10 hours a day and literally no reward. 

They call this a self employed post but it's a total joke. Self employment means I can take time off when I need to (and it was 2 weeks after 4 months with them) and because they didn't want me to (although didn't actually tell me that) they weren't happy. The second I challenged them in a respectful and assertive way, they couldn't handle it. They clearly expect their drivers to be stupid with no way of communicating if there are problems. What they really want are donkeys or robots, not people. 

I have never been so happy to be rid of a modern day sweat shop that disguises itself as a business opportunity. Zero hour contracts should be abolished!

Please do yourself a favour and never step foot in this company. You'd be better off doing whatever you are doing now until you find something else. TRUST ME!

So the depot was in Coventry, so they had drivers that would your load to your house which is nice but they’re supposed to come from 8am-11am but the earliest I’ve received them is 11am must of the time it’s 2pm and you have to stay at home because you can’t miss them. When you receive the parcels it’ll take you an hour to hour and half sorting and you have to plan your own route. The pick your days thing is not true I had Saturdays off and ever since I started working with yodel I’ve always had someone come drop parcels on days I do not work then get asked to deliver them and if you don’t they’ll hit you with failure to deliver however many parcels were due out then and it’s £2 per parcel you didn’t deliver which is crazy when you weren’t supposed to be working and the managers will have ago at you and be rude to you and try scare you into doing it on your days off. There is next to no training and you have no idea who your managers are or anything. And they say the pay is £16-£18 but in reality when you calculate the time it takes you to sort 100 parcels and all the times you have to fail a delivery because they’re not in and no one els will take it and there’s no safe place because you can’t just leave it at someone’s door or front porch that 100 parcels turn into like 70 or 60 so you’ll do like 5 hours and be paid £8-£10 an hour and on top of that managers will deduct that even more for the smallest things. I worked there for 3 weeks and then when they decided to bring parcels on my day off then say you failed to deliver them because i refused to be forced to work when there threatening me over the phone and saying we’ll look bad I quit immediately. Another thing is that customers will be constantly ringing you on your personal phone asking where there delivery is or what time their parcel will come and that’s because if they call and customer service or management they’ll just say call the driver they don’t know that’s how poor they are and what little they do. Just avoid at all costs I don’t normally write reviews but this is definitely the worst job out there I worked for 3 weeks and and after they deducted me for not working on the day I don’t work I only got paid like £400 which is crazy and I delivered about 600-700 parcels. Nothing enjoyable about it just the same thing everyday. No workplace culture because your on your own and managers are out to get you.

If you want to earn around £5 an hour BEFORE you deduct your petrol/diesel and travelling expenses then maybe this is the job for you.
In your own unpaid time you are expected to plan your route for the day (which takes maybe half an hour) after printing off maps and lists of streets for your area. You can pay for a route planner for your mobile phone (unless you can find a free one) if you want to do it that way.
Large sacks of parcels are delivered to you between 9am and 11am (I have received some at 2.30pm), some very heavy to lift. Again in your own unpaid time you are expected to lug them into your house, count them (varies around 30 to 70 parcels), record the number on your HHT, scan each individual parcel, sort them into route order and load them into your car. Maybe takes about 45 minutes.
Many of the parcels are microwave sized or bigger and it is difficult to fit them all inside an estate car. Sometimes you have to load the car for one area, deliver them then come back home and reload for the next area.
I was paid 70p per parcel delivered. If the recipient or neighbours weren’t in you don’t get paid. You are expected to try on 3 consecutive days none of which you will be paid for unless it is delivered. 
The HHT and software crashes at least once or twice a day and takes about 5 minutes to reboot and reload (sometimes in front of a customer) which is somewhat embarrassing.
Yodel gives your mobile number to customers who you must be in contact with between 9am and 9pm six days a week.
Having lived in my area for 30 years I know every short cut and it is impossible to deliver the parcels any quicker and it still works out at about £5 an hour.
Paying a flat rate of 70p to every courier does not take in to account that some post code areas are more difficult than others. I had to take two post code areas to make the numbers up both of which are time consuming routes. Some post code areas are easier and quicker and the couriers may be happy with 70p per parcel. Yodel should monitor each area and pay a rate which is equal to minimum wage for each area.

You have to be very patient and enjoy driving a lot to be able to stay at this company. Turnover is very high and I've seen most people leave after 2-6 weeks. If you are lucky enough to be given a route you can learn and enjoy then the job will be a lot more tolerable but that's simply because you are out on your own delivering. Management is consistently making all drivers work harder and longer hours with little to no pay or benefit increase. They do not communicate anything well so rules spread like heresay throughout the depot. They do not enforce fines unless 'necessary' which leads to distinct periods of time, where business is slow, that drivers are suddenly fined more often and heavily for common practise. They pay you per successfully delivered/collected parcel, which  means drivers are unfairly expected to wait upon parcels and sort them themselves in their own unpaid time. The workplace culture is very negative and most employees including night staff, day staff, office and drivers consistently complain about recurring issues including management, pay, hours, fines, unpaid delays, and general organisation of business. The hardest part of my job is dealing with rightfully unhappy customers when I am forced to bring them parcels in horrendous condition due to the lack of care in any of the depot staff. I am unable to refuse any deliveries for any reason, recently now, including parcels that are not due to be delivered on that day due to an inability for the depot to organise and manage storage of parcels. You are self employed so technically you can choose your hours but unless you commit to the standard 6 day working week you will find yourself at risk of losing your work. Parcels are also meant to be split so vans take the larger ones and small vehicles take the small parcels yet this line has now become such a grey area that many people have been told to either get larger vehicles to accommodate larger parcels or to leave. This was yet another money making scheme to give less work to the large van drivers who are paid more. So again, if you do own a larger vehicle, and you enjoy driving, and are patient enough to deal with the way in which you are paid then you may enjoy it.

At start I was pretty excited as I could choose to work full week or if part time than 3 days a week which I could choose. As they explained more parcels more hours in a day, but less hours less parcels, less pay. As here you got paid only for parcels. When I went to training it's just was explained how it's working and I could choose when to start work it could be even next day. If you are living in Coventry area than you have to go on morning from 7.30-9.30 to collect your parcels what's for you assigned that day. As first day is just a explaining and training on app and than you approximately deliver 20 parcels on your own. But I can say it all depends on postcode what they are giving you and if it says in hour you can have £18-£20 it's not true if you have postcode like cv13 and it's all flats in the city centre. My second day I had around 40 parcels and I finished them in around 2.5h-3h. For one parcel you get paid in areas from 75p up to 95p it depends on each parcel. So even on easy postcode I got approximate £11-£12 in hour. I understand I just started and might be bit slower but next time I had same amount of parcels difficult postcode and I ended up doing job until late evening from morning. I just want to add that they are not paying anything towards fuel, no pay while you had to go to warehouse to collect parcels, no matter how long you spend you got paid only for delivered parcels. So for me it was not worth at all, as on Saturday I spend all day delivering parcels in heat for around 7h it was just 40 parcels and in money that would be approximate £35 more or less. So would you say that £5 in hour is a good rate? And not be paid nothing towards petrol and wasted time to go 20 min to warehouse just to collect parcels. I understand that you can have worse and better days but if there is even possible to have day like this it's really not worth it at all. 

I t was an extremely easy job. I chose when to work between the hours of 7am - 9pm. I enjoyed the job but the money was very very poor. It would take between 1 and a half to 2 hours to receipt my parcels and collections and then sort them into areas and then schedule a route and load the car. Then i would do my business parcels first. i would work at least 5 hours a day 6 days a week for average wage of £90 a week. petrol was not included and was £5 a day on average. I had to have business insurance which doubled my normal insurance so i was practically earning nothing. From the time you received your parcels customers who were on 24 hr or next day delivery were told by text or email that their parcels would be delivered by 9pm and i was telephoned non-stop by the customer about when i will be delivering to them as they want to go out or that they wont be in till such a time. It was very distressing to be chased all day every day. I delivered every parcel possible every day. I filled in cards correctly(which took at least 2 mins to fill in as you had to put date, time, customers name, parcel number and where you had left it or my phone number to call me back for re-delivery) to let customers know i called.The hardest part of the job was the management never contacted me unless there was a problem as the Hand held did and told them all i input. But when i needed new cards or my PDA(handheld) didnt work they were hopeless at getting back to you and getting anything to you. I had to work off the manifest if the PDA didnt work and this would add minumum an hour to my job. The office staff didnt report or communicate with each other at all because when i called with the same problem several times over nobody was told by anybody else. Communication was very poor. The delivery driver turned up anytime between 8.15am- 10am and this was a nuisance as you couldnt get on with it till they came.

Delivered thousands of parcels correctly & on time. In 9 months (out of 12, I broke 2 cars and made a net (self-employed) loss of £1500). 

The first job I've had where I've paid to deliver parcels for someone.
 I suppose someone has to pay for "free delivery", just rather it wasn't me! 

Think about it: if you deliver 400 parcels a week, you open & shut car doors, climb in & out and stop & start the car probably 1000 times a week - probably 3 months use a week - week in, week out. This breaks cars, and 50p a parcel doesn't cover petrol, repairs & deterioration. The car breaks, you lose you job, such as it was.

You don't get paid if someone is not home (3 attempts over 3 days) and you can't deliver. Some days that might be half your parcels. No lunch, 6 days a week, no holidays, no sick, no pay! Ask for a day off and you are asked "do you really want this job"!

3 days out of 6, depot trunker lorry delivery late, so hanging around for hours waiting for parcels (unpaid), then screwed by late start. 

Even in a fairly dense area, you cannot average much more than 10 parcels or so an hour (at 50p?) as very few are ever in the same road. You get a lot of business deliveries palmed off onto the "home delivery" couriers for cheapness and a latter trick was multiple parcels taped together as one (50p). 

At Christmas, you get more parcels than you could possibly deliver or even fit in the car. Nobody cares, as they don't have a plan B, so you get stressed customers and rows from management over late deliveries that you've been telling them about for weeks!

Took me a while to realise I was being mugged. The management all turn up in new BMW X5s.

Think about that next time you order or post cheaply through Yodel (collect plus) and it gets lost or kicked to death. Maybe you get what you pay for.

Certainly, this is abuse of every employment law imaginable, voided by your "self-employment", though you don't work for anyone else.

DON'T DO IT!

I worked at Yodel, lincoln for 6 weeks. I left because I was offered a job elsewhere for more money and was full time.

My role at Yodel was part time (24 hr per week) although i was working 40~45 hrs per week. There is no overtime payment, it is all a flat hourly payment. I was paid £8 p/h. I was a driver so would start at 10am arrive at depot and collect the red parcels which other couriers had left. These were urgent pacels that need delivery that day. I could deliver between 2 and 10 parcels over a huge area. I would then also have to make collections at certain times collecting usually around 300 parcels. These would be from around 5 pick ups. 

I would return to depot between 6 and 7 to unload my van. All this was very easy if a little pushed for time at times. I was more shocked atbthe work levels for the couriers (self emplyed guys), on average they would be delivering 180 parcels per day. Absolutely shocking. 

The management while friendly the was an afternoon manager who was just impossible to work with, wouldn't say hello to you, ask how you day was would just scornfully look at you and moan and swear at you, no person skills which is in my opinion a major part of being a manager. 

Upon leaving i was begged to stay but the compaby could no compete with what i would be getting at my new job, besides yodel was switching to a 7 day a week working role, they already pushed you to work a Saturday (no extra pay) and would often compain at you if you didnt work or would be ringing you early saturday morning to come in. So now they'll be doing to same on a sunday, for no extra pay.

In short the role i had was easy but i would sometimes have to cover a normal courier route when they walked out, 14 hour days there. Pay was rubbish. Management roles could learn to treat staff better. My first wage slip, 230 hours in 6 weeks, after tax pay £1100. Shocking!!

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Courier driver 6 salaries reported	£70.33 per day
Delivery driver 122 salaries reported	£19.00 per hour
Courier 1 salary reported	£50.00 per day
Van driver 1 salary reported	£4,500 per month
Warehouse worker 1 salary reported	£19,500 per year

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