Are Couriers Failing Small Businesses? A Call for Better Delivery Options

There was a time when courier services were a lifesaver for small businesses. Fast, trackable, offering one rate regardless of box size or weight and a welcome alternative to the long queues at the post office. But in recent years, many of us have started to ask the same question: what happened?

If you're a small business owner in Ireland, you’ve probably had your fair share of headaches with couriers and you know exactly what I'm talking about. Missed collections, phantom “attempted deliveries,” and the endless loop of automated or non-existent customer service... it's frustrating, time-consuming, and damaging to customer trust.

So why is this happening? And is it time we re-evaluate how we send and receive goods in 2025?

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man standing inside a window looking out, waiting for the courier van to arrive

My Experience with Couriers in Ireland

I’ve been in business for nearly 10 years now, and in that time I’ve dealt with just about every courier company operating in Ireland. I know the jargon, the excuses, the broken promises, and the occasional outright nonsense, but I also know how much work goes on behind the scenes to keep orders moving.

How I prepare, pack, and schedule orders plays a huge role in how smoothly my own deliveries go, and I’ve written about that in more detail in How I Process Orders in My Small Business (And Why This System Saves Me Headaches). Even with a solid system in place, though, things can still unravel once a parcel leaves the workshop.

I’ve also learned to recognise when an individual driver goes above and beyond, quietly holding the whole thing together and often saving their company’s reputation without thanks or recognition. To those drivers, I salute you.

How I started Shipping

I started with An Post initially, but many of my packages are awkward sizes, weights, and rates that are impossible to predict — so couriers with single-package rates were a necessity for my website checkout and my small business.

An Post’s pricing structure is just too finicky: a single sheet of paper or bit of packing fill can bump your parcel into the next tariff bracket. That’s just not practical when you’re shipping daily as a business and profit margins are fairly tight.

The Covid Effect: Recruitment & Retention Collapsed

In the last few years and especially since the Covid lockdowns, courier companies are struggling to recruit and retain reliable drivers. In fact, many Irish companies and small businesses have the same issue with recruitment and retention, it seems to be a new phenomenon.

For those that don't realise yet, being a courier driver is an extremely high-pressure job and it gets harder when someone calls in sick or you are asked to provide cover by taking on an extra 40 drops on top of your daily rate. I have found that many drivers do not last the pace and are in a new job within a matter of months and glad to be free & clear and out of the courier game.

Why Courier Reliability Is Falling Apart

High turnover means fewer experienced staff, lost route knowledge, more rushed deliveries, and more errors. Ever wait all day looking out the windows periodically — waiting for your package and then receive the ' we tried to contact you or we called and there was nobody home' messages. That sets the blood pressure rising indeed.

New hires may often lack proper training or motivation and after the first soft week with 70 drops per day, they are thrown in the deep end with the full 200+ daily drops by week 2. Nobody wants that kind of a start at a new job. It’s no surprise when new drivers return to the depot with 60 failed deliveries, the jump from 70 to 200 drops in a short space of time is absolutely unreasonable. At least give them a few weeks to learn the estates, roads and localities before throwing them in the deep end.

For many new employees, their attitude seems to be that it's just a stopgap job until a better option comes along. “Meeting expectations” has been replaced with “just getting through the day.” It's not good enough for them, it shouldn't be good enough for you.

Courier Franchises

This ties directly into the issue above. Most major courier companies rely on networks of franchise owners to handle local delivery routes. In theory, this system works well — the parent company gets stable profit margins without the hassle of local logistics and huge staff counts.

But if the franchise model gets squeezed too hard, it breaks. If franchisees aren’t making enough to sustain their operation, they walk away. And they have. I’ve been directly affected by this — routes just vanish overnight, and service falls apart.

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Employer Expectations

I have been an employer and I remember times when I wasn't being realistic in my expectations for employee daily work rates & my own schedules. In my mind a job should have been done by 3pm but when checked it looked like the job wouldn't be finished until 11am the following day.

Sounds crazy, right?

It took me some time to realise that I was living in cloud cuckoo-land and my employees were working at their rates and not mine. Yes, you want the best possible outcome but nobody is going to work at your rate for 8 hours a day. Come on!

Courier Business Models Need a Reality Check

I don't understand why courier bosses don't simply sit down, calculate the minimum amount of drops and pickups required by each driver to cover:

Vehicle purchase, Tax & Insurance, Diesel, Maintenance, Repairs, CVRT etc
Goods in Transit Insurance
Employees - wages, PRSI, employer contributions & holiday pay.
Business overheads - Warehouse, staffing at warehouse, Electricity & heat, Equipment & Accountancy.

Every cost can be broken down and assigned per head for a rough gauge and then adjust that gauge because every employee is different and has different speeds or reliabilities.

Every driver must meet the minimum per day requirements plus the expected amount to cover company profit and emergency sundry fund. Every business is entitled to make a profit and cover eventualities unforeseen.

Of course things will go awry during the day and some drivers won't meet the minimum but that's all part of it. There can be good days and bad days. You have to be able to pivot in business to meet challenges. A good supervisor or onsite manager can be the difference between a well oiled machine and a shit-show.

The Real Reason Couriers Keep Missing Deliveries

I figured out the biggest issue with couriers some time ago — just by talking to drivers directly. Let me break it down simply:

A courier company needs X staff to sort parcels and Y drivers to handle deliveries and collections. So what do they do? They hire exactly X and Y people — no more, no less.

The problem is, every employee is entitled to a month of paid leave each year, plus there’s always unexpected sick days. To cover that, you’d think they’d keep a few extra drivers on standby — but extra drivers cost money. An additional full-time driver can cost a company €40,000 to €50,000 gross per year. Many firms just don’t want that expense sitting idle so your delivery suffers.

Ideally, self-employed drivers could bridge that gap — but only if they’re paid fairly and given proper, manageable routes instead of the scraps nobody wants.

Until companies fix this flaw, late deliveries and “sorry we missed you” messages will keep piling up — no matter how good the tracking app looks.

woman inside a window looking out at the courier van driving away, a message on her phone saying sorry we couldn't deliver to you

The Impact of Missed Deliveries for Small Businesses

Package collections missed, delayed, or misrouted packages hurt a small businesses reputation and not the courier’s. If I tell my customer via my website that the package will be collected in the afternoon and be in their hands the following day — that is a promise. If the courier messes that up, my customer may choose to never do business with me again — just based on that one failed promise. If I as a business got that sale from paid advertising, I have also just lost that cost plus any future purchases that customer may have made.

I'm often the one apologising for something that wasn’t my fault and I've had to reword my delivery explanations many times over the years to explain how things work and make excuses for courier cock-ups.

The customer doesn't care about third party delivery services — only your statement on the website promising next day delivery.

Trust breaks down quickly and repeat customers are hard-earned in today’s market.

An Post Isn’t an Option for Most Small Businesses — But It Could Be

There are many advantages to using An Post when it comes to deliveries. Local postmen/women know their areas and packages are never 'thrown in over gate' but instead returned to depot and an advisory slip left behind. The drivers get to know the recipients as their routes rarely change. A false missed delivery notification is never sent.

Sometimes, I’d love to return to using An Post but only if they made things more viable for small businesses like mine. If you are an An Post high-up reading this, how about;

A courier rate similar to the couriers without minimum quantities.
Available to businesses that fall below your current quantities.
A collection service by the local postman to your door that's affordable.
A convenient drop off location in the local post office without queuing.

I realise that they do offer services in the above but often with major caveats.

An Post offer collections from business locations but the rate is massive altogether as I recently found out. Your postman may come to your business or house everyday anyway, why not a token sum for onboarding 1 or 2 packages? Are you not gaining extra business and revenue from this?

I did try and look for an account with An Post a few years ago, they weren't interested because I was too small for them. A semi-state company that doesn't need your business seemed to be the attitude. I could have bought the stamp books and proved my quantities that way but it wasn't what I wanted as the payment was upfront.

An Post - if you're listening, there's a small army of businesses that would love to work with you again. Maybe it’s time to open the door back up and offer flexible small business options?

What Could Fix the Courier Crisis?

A major rethink of business practice is in order for each company I believe.

Pay fair wages to attract long-term, career-minded staff. Ease them in gently but tell them from the beginning that they will be expected to make 150 drops plus 20 collections stops a day by the end of 30 days or whatever your quota for urban and rural areas is. Allow them to:

Build up to the minimum delivery expectation gradually,
Give them a set route, don't change it every day.
Let them learn that route, taxi drivers are allowed this courtesy.
Debrief them daily to resolve any route or tech issues.
Don't give them extra drops because you haven't enough staff!

I doubt any courier boss does any of these. Employees that feel like a number will not care about your expectations. Treat them like human beings, put yourself in their shoes for a minute.

Here are some other Suggestions

● Have one driver focused on deliveries in the morning and collections in the afternoon in busy areas that other drivers struggle to get through. That way, regular route drivers can stick to their normal runs while pressure points are actively managed instead of ignored.

● Bring in floaters. Retired or semi-retired drivers are often an excellent option and can work on a job rate or fixed hourly basis. Many are happy with flexible, self-employed arrangements and bring experience that can’t be rushed or trained overnight.

● Offer a realistic per-package rate for self-employed sub-contractors that allows drivers to earn a decent living while still covering contracted delivery costs. Yes, it costs more than a PAYE role, but clearing backlogs and meeting obligations matters more than short-term savings.

● And if your operation genuinely requires 30 drivers to function, plan for 32. Sickness, emergencies, and no-shows are not rare events, they are part of running any people-based business. Absorbing that cost is no different to absorbing rising fuel prices or insurance, it’s part of reality.

This is something I’ve written about more broadly when discussing how hard it is to run a craft business in Ireland. Many of these pressures are shared across small businesses, the difference is that courier failures ripple outward and affect hundreds of others downstream.

Instead, what we see too often is the same pattern repeated every year — predictable pressure, predictable scrambling, and a predictable drop in service when it matters most. That isn’t bad luck, it’s a planning issue, and it’s one that needs to be addressed.

Is It Time for a New Model?

Could Ireland support a new kind of courier? One built for quality over speed? I don't know is the honest answer. There is too much competition out there for such a small market and none of the couriers are quite big enough to cover everything. Only a major player with lots of investment money and a penchant for takeovers could correct or change this.

An Post has so many advantages over couriers as they are using facilities and business practices in place since before the formation of the Irish state.

An amalgamation of 2 to 3 current couriers would massively help reorganise the industry here. The use of subcontractors is great for the major couriers board of directors but what happens when that subcontractor suddenly pulls their service and leaves their contract? That has happened several times and I was affected directly by one of those incidences.

Christmas 2025: When the System Was Simply Overloaded

The Christmas period just gone was a perfect example of how fragile delivery systems can be when everything hits at once.

In Ireland, parcel volumes surged to levels that would test even the best-run networks. Couriers were under enormous pressure to keep up, with extended delivery routes, unfamiliar areas, and a heavy reliance on seasonal and part-time drivers drafted in to cope with demand. That’s not a criticism of the drivers themselves, many were clearly doing their best in difficult circumstances, but it does highlight how stretched the system became.

On top of that, the collapse of Fastway Couriers late in the year added further strain to an already stretched system. Fastway customers who were also already shipping with DPD were allowed to transition fully to DPD, while new customer onboarding was paused until January so volumes could be controlled as much as possible.

Even with those limits in place, the sudden redistribution of parcels during the busiest time of the year created an unavoidable spike in demand. That kind of pressure would test any delivery network, and knock-on delays and communication issues were almost inevitable.

From a small business point of view, it was a frustrating period. Parcels were delayed, tracking was sometimes unreliable, and communication often lagged behind reality on the ground. But it was also clear that couriers weren’t failing through lack of effort. They were trying to operate at full throttle in conditions that were simply unsustainable.

If anything, Christmas 2025 showed that the problem isn’t individual couriers or drivers, it’s the lack of resilience built into the system. When one part fails or demand spikes suddenly, there’s very little slack to protect small businesses and customers from the fallout.

Conclusion:

As small businesses, we rely on logistics just as much as we rely on good products. When deliveries fail, it isn’t just parcels that are affected, it’s trust, reputation, and future sales.

I don’t underestimate the challenges courier companies face, staffing pressures, seasonal surges, and unpredictable parcel volumes are very real. But those realities need to be planned for properly. Systems have to be built for pressure, not for average weeks that rarely exist in the real world.

Christmas 2025 showed just how quickly things can unravel when demand spikes and there’s no room left in the system. Drivers, depots, and support teams were clearly stretched to their limits, and small businesses were left carrying the consequences.

Have you had similar courier problems, either as a business owner or as a customer? I’d genuinely like to hear how others are navigating it.

Thanks for Reading, David

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About the Author

I’m David Condon, a writer and small business owner from Tralee, Co. Kerry. My main work is in handcrafted woodturning and tuition, but this blog gives me space to explore other interests — practical ideas, reviews, and reflections from day-to-day life.
For more details, see the Note from the Author section below.

💬 Note from the Author
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