Do you need to get something urgently to the other end of the country? Sending goods directly nationwide is what we specialise in – and it’s not as expensive as you may think! For example Redhill to Birmingham is only £162 + VAT and your goods should be there within 3 hours, traffic permitting of course. If you’ve got an engineer waiting on site for an urgent part, or a customer who needs something desperately then we think it represents excellent value for money. Maybe you’ve got urgent documents needed elsewhere in order to close a large deal. Give us a call and we’ll be happy to help. Remember you can find out the price using our calculator at the top of our home page.

We are pleased to announce that we now have a long wheelbase Mercedes Sprinter van on our fleet. This van is able to take 4.2 metres in length and up to 1600kgs. It can take three normal sized pallets with ease. We are offering it a very competitive rate of just an extra 50% above our normal advertised rates for small vans. Please give us a call if you’d like to book this van as we are sure it will prove popular.

Have you ever needed a new passport really urgently? I discovered yesterday that you can get a new passport the same day and you don’t even need to leave your office. Make an appointment at the Passport Office in Eccleston Square, London SW1 and then arrange for one of our couriers to act as your agent. Yesterday I did just that and took the relevant forms, photographs and payment from a client in Dorking, lodged the application and then waited four hours for the passport to be ready for completion. By the close of office hours I was back at the client with his new passport ready for another ten years of travelling the globe.

Many of you who’ve seen our flagship vehicle recently may have noticed that the signwriting was starting to look a bit worn. The van is only two years old but unfortunately the quality of the original signwriting seems to have been fairly poor. Anyway, earlier this week I took my van along to Bel Signs in Crawley and a very helpful young man called Darren spent most of the day replacing all the signwriting. I have to say that the quality of his work is brilliant, and more surprisingly he actually charged us less than we were charged two years ago by the people who did the job originally. This is also taking into account the fact that Darren had to take all the old signwriting off the van before he started – which took him several hours. 

So if anyone wants any signwriting done, whether it’s a vehicle or a shop front, have a look at Bel Signs. I feel like I’m driving around in a new van now!

If you’ve got smaller items to send via an Overnight service then give our Bagit service a try. From only £11 we can deliver your item to most areas of the Mainland UK for next working day delivery. If you’ve got two deliveries then they’re only £9 each. For £2 more we’ll get them there before noon next working day. If you’ve got even more items then greater discounts are available. See the link on our ‘What We Do’ page, or call us on 0845 092 0010 for more details. All prices are subject to VAT.

From today, 1^st June, we’ve launched an exciting new service for smaller items to Central London. If you’ve got items or small easily portable packages (under 5kgs) to get to Central London then why not try our ‘Economy Document Service’? The cost is only £30 + VAT and we won’t charge you the London Congestion Charge either! If the items aren’t desperately urgent then give us four hours from the time you call and we’ll get them there for you – so if you call us at 11am for example we’ll deliver by 3pm. The following London Postcodes are included in this service:  W1, W2, W8, WC1, WC2, EC1, EC2, EC3, EC4, SE1, SW1, SW3, SW7, SW10, E1, N1 & NW1. 

Initially we are only able to offer this service from the following start postcodes: RH1, RH2, RH3, RH4, RH6 & RH9 but if the service proves popular we hope to be able to extend it to include areas further out. 

PLUS

If you’ve got more than one delivery then you can save even more!  The second delivery would only be a further £20 + VAT and then each extra delivery only £15 + VAT. 

Call us now on 0845 092 0010 for more details. 

We are also happy to offer the service in reverse – so if you’ve got something small to be collected from Central London to come back to you we can do that as well. However we do need an extra hour for this please – so call us at 10am for example and we’ll have it back with you by 3pm.

The question on everyone’s lips these days, seems to be ‘what’s playing on your iPod?’ Whenever I switch on my iPod I find the battery’s flat – so for me, the answer is always ‘nothing at all’. It’s a very different matter when it comes to what I listen to whilst I’m driving – the CD I play over and over and over again is ‘The Very Best of Rondo Veneziano’.

I first came across it at our wonderful hairdressers – Pisani in Woodhatch and I loved it the first time I heard it. I left many hints for Frank over the following months, but it was my sister, Ali, who gave it to me for Christmas – and, as luck would have it, she received a bonus copy of her own, courtesy of Amazon. She had ordered my CD online but, in Amazon’s infinite wisdom, her order got into a loop and started duplicating itself. She phoned to stop the flood of emails acknowledging orders, but too late to stop a second copy of the CD being sent out, which she was told she could keep with Amazon’s compliments. So Ali now works along to this brilliantly uplifting music, whilst I drive. I can’t explain it, obviously it’s not everyone’s taste, but it just makes me feel happier as I drive around. It’s excellent music on the move, with its upbeat momentum and a spring in its step!

It’s not Frank’s sort of music at all, as he told me when first he heard it – he loves all contemporary music from the 60s till now – he’s great to have on your quiz team! But a strange thing happens when, on the odd occasion, Frank drives Katy the Tardis… I will have left Katy’s radio tuned into the local BBC radio station but when I next return I find the volume turned up and ‘The Very Best of Rondo Veneziano’ playing!

To get a taster of mine and Ali’s favourite CD visit the Rondo Veneziano site.

Local councils are discovering that a wonderful source of revenue is to restrict parking and loading as much as possible thereby increasing the number of parking tickets they can issue. In some places, such as Wellesley Road in Croydon, cameras are used to record vehicle information and then the ticket is sent on afterwards. You don’t even realise you’ve got a ticket until several days later which seems grossly unfair.

All of this, of course, means that we couriers are encountering more and more problems when trying to deliver. The problem is especially great in London of course and with the advent of red routes. Indeed there are some places that are pretty much impossible to deliver to without getting a ticket. The only way round this, that we can see, is to have a telephone number for the delivery point and for someone to come out and meet the driver in order to take delivery of the goods, or at least to watch the van while the driver is unloading. We understand that our clients are loathe to pay a parking ticket fine obtained while delivering their goods so we always let them know as soon as we are having problems, before the driver leaves the van unattended and risks a ticket. Where possible the driver will park legally even if it’s a little way from the delivery point, but of course this may mean that the delivery takes much longer and therefore waiting time will be incurred – however this is always much cheaper than a parking ticket.

Well what a start to 2010. The snow arrived in style and has certainly caused us a few problems. However business is still continuing.

Last Friday one of our drivers in a 4×4 managed to deliver to Gloucester and then Runcorn. He went through temperatures as low as -12 degrees on his way there, and when he came off the motorway to get into Runcorn the slip road was exactly that! One solid sheet of ice which even a 4×4 couldn’t get a grip on. But he made it without incident I’m glad to say.

We’re starting to get back to some sort of normality here in the South East this week, but there are still major problems in some parts of the country which are affecting our overnight service. UK Mail are doing an excellent job considering the circumstances and we are always constantly updated about any delays. If you need to know if we can get somewhere then just give us a call.