Haulage Companies And Courier Companies – What Is The Difference?

One of the fastest growing sectors in the UK economy is UK logistics. The transport logistics industry started taking the whole country by storm when it was foreseen that a number of companies needing effective shipment and delivery solutions was growing rapidly. This has helped the trade efficiently in the past few years and will continue to thrive in the future. Logistics is divided into many categories with warehousing, supply chain management, order fulfilment and distribution to consider. However the freight logistics side of this industry covers a range of products and areas. There are big differences in the transportation of certain goods and the type of company your business would outsource this work to would depend on what exactly is require, where the goods are going and the type of goods you have.

Let’s take a look at just two areas of freight logistics – couriers and road haulage companies

 

Despite the fact that both haulage companies and courier companies use the kind of policy which specifies “Carriage of Goods” they have quite a few differences between them. Take for example haulage contractors, they often have specific contracts to whom they distribute to on a regular basis. They have pre-booked appointments and they know exactly what they are carrying before the goods are loaded and transported. The size and type of goods a haulier carries would also be on a larger scale than a courier with haulage companies carrying palletized goods and containers in comparison to a courier who would be transporting goods on a smaller scale such as parcels and letters. Due to the size of products distributed, the size of vehicles used to transport these goods would also be much larger for a road haulage company than a courier.

Couriers generally don’t have specific contracts however they may be contracted by certain businesses to carry out their parcel delivery needs. They tend to advertise and get customers for transporting one-off items. And in general, its key difference from the hauliers other than size of goods and vehicle type is that anyone could contact a courier or courier company at any time on any given day, and they aren’t always aware of the packages they are transporting.

Aside from the obvious differences stated above, what are the other dissimilarities of both from one another?

Courier Companies

Let’s start off with courier companies. Generally, they provide parcel delivery services nationwide and the majority of these companies offer parcel delivery worldwide. In United Kingdom, there are thousands of courier service companies registered and listed and most of these provide very similar parcel delivery services such as next day, same day deliveries and domestic and business courier services.

One of the setbacks of hiring courier companies for small parcel is the expense however the benefits of this service is reduced time for the recipient to receive the goods and that each step of the parcels journey can be tracked, giving the customer piece of mind.

Haulage Companies

Haulage companies, on the other hand transport heavier, larger goods so when talking about a road haulage company, they would distribute pallets or containers of merchandise.

In general, every haulage trip comes from point of origin to the address where the package is scheduled to deliver – instead of having multiple stops and starts carried out by couriers. Yes, haulage insurance can be costly. We should blame that to the possibility of having sheer amount of physical and financial damage that can be caused when an accident happens. On average, hauliers focus in hauling freight in large heavy vehicles, and sometimes, warehousing. They also handle container shipping. Simply put, couriers transport hand-carry packages while hauliers transport freight.

If you are looking for a freight transport company for your goods then take a look at the services DMG Freight Services offer. We offer fantastic road haulage rates, have our own fleet of vehicles and work with many companies in the UK handling their freight forwarding requirements.