Courier services in Toronto and the GTA

Three things decide a courier price and it is worth answering all three when you post. HOW MANY STOPS, because one pickup and one drop is a different shape of task from a route with a dozen, and a route is priced on distance and sequence rather than on the item. WHAT HAS TO BE PROVED at the far end — a signature from a named person, a photograph of where it was left, an identity check, a timestamp — because proof of delivery is the actual product here, and a task with no defined proof is a delivery task wearing a courier’s name. And WHAT THE ITEM IS physically: an envelope travels on a bike or in any car, a printer needs a hatchback, and a skid needs a tail-lift and a pallet truck at both ends plus somewhere that can receive it. Those are three different vehicles at three different prices.

Some things do not travel as an ordinary courier task, and it is much better to know before you post than after somebody has driven across the region. Anything whose transport is licensed or regulated is out: alcohol and cannabis move under their own rules in Ontario rather than as a private errand, prescription medication is a pharmacy’s responsibility, and dangerous goods, firearms and live animals each have a regime of their own. Cash is a poor idea for reasons that have nothing to do with regulation. Original documents that cannot be replaced — a passport, a single signed original, a certificate — can travel perfectly well, but they are exactly the case for insisting on a named-signature handover and a photograph at both ends rather than a doorstep drop.

The other half of this category is distribution rather than transport, and it is priced completely differently. Flyers, menus, catalogues and samples into letterboxes across a defined area is measured in doors rather than in kilometres, and two things move the price: the housing type and the access. A street of houses gets walked. A high-rise usually is not available at all, because most GTA buildings do not permit unaddressed distribution and it gets stopped at the desk. Define the area precisely — streets, or a postal boundary — say roughly how many pieces, say whether you are supplying them or they are being collected from a printer, and ask what record comes back. A distribution task with no record of where it went is not something anybody can check afterwards.

For a single run, a useful post is short and specific: the pickup address and the window it can be collected in, the destination and the deadline it has to be there by, what the item is and roughly how big and heavy, whether it has to stay flat, upright, dry or cold, who is receiving it and whether they will actually be present, and what you want as proof. Then add the two things that go wrong at the ends more often than anything in the middle — whether there is a dock, a desk or a locked lobby at either address, and whether anyone there has been told to expect an arrival. An offer written against those answers is a fixed price you can hold somebody to. One written against "deliver a package downtown" is a guess.