Business Ideas

If you have reliable transportation, even if it is just a bicycle, and a little bit of motivation, you have all you need to start your own business with a delivery or messenger service. You can work at the wholesale or retail level, working for other businesses or for individual customers of those businesses. You may even want to try a little of both until you figure which is more lucrative for you.

 

Starting a Delivery Service

 

Businesses all over town, even in small towns, have a need of a reliable delivery service from time to time. No one business is likely to be able to keep a contractor working full time. If they could, they would probably hire an employee to do it. However, you could easily negotiate with businesses to pay you a small monthly or yearly retainer plus a set amount per delivery or per mile to be available to them when they need you. You can have several clients this way, which improves the chances of making this a profitable business.

 

Another tactic you could try would be to have businesses recommend you, calling you if the customer decides to use your service, to their customers who need deliveries made to them. In this case, you would not be working for the business, but for the individual. Of course, you can charge a higher rate for this type of service because it is retail.

 

If you are making deliveries for businesses, they may want you to have their company logo on your vehicle. Magnetic signs work great for this purpose. You simply affix them when you pick up the item you are delivering and remove them after making the delivery and leaving the location. It is important to remember that these customers see you as a representative of the company you are delivering for and to conduct yourself accordingly to avoid harming that business’s reputation.

 

To get your business started, you will need to do a couple of things. First, you will need to have something printed up with your rates defined for customers to see. You may choose to have two separate price lists made up, one for business customers and one for retail customers. You should have some business cards created with your company name and contact information on them. These will need to be given to every potential client you meet. You should advertise your new business in the local paper, and if possible, in the Yellow Pages.

 

Starting a Messenger Service

 

A messenger service has a great deal in common with a delivery service. The chief difference is that the parcels carried by messengers are often important documents that are needed to complete business deals or highly valuable items such as bonds that are in need of speedy deliver and protection while en route.

 

Because of the importance and/or value of items carried by a messenger service, you can charge higher rates for delivering these parcels. However, you should probably contact your insurance carrier and have yourself bonded before advertising a messenger service. Being bonded is not difficult, but it assures your potential clients that you take the importance of their valuable documents seriously and will not trust them in the hands of an individual who might lose or damage them.

 

In a smaller town, it may be possible to start out as both a delivery and a messenger service. As your business grows, you can take it more in the direction of the one that produces the most income on a consistent basis or continue to offer both services. In a larger city, the chances are good that you will need to decide whether to operate a delivery service or a messenger service from the outset and stick to it.

 

Operating a delivery or messenger service is one of the few types of business that is not likely to see much of a slowdown due to the poor economy. In fact, it is possible that entrepreneurs who start a delivery or messenger business now may find their business growing more quickly than usual as other businesses are downsizing and outsourcing more of their functions. Operating a delivery or messenger service could be a great way to make a little extra money or to go into business for yourself.