About Courier Cleanup

I'm not a generic consultant. I actually bought a messy courier service myself a few years back – same 7-figure kind of size, mix of independent contractor drivers and some staff – and got hit with the same stuff most owners run into: nothing written down, no dispatch team, poor billing process, slow-paying accounts, everything done on pen and paper, very old school.

And I dug myself out by doing exactly this: outlining every job in the business, creating Standard Operating Procedures for each job, hiring around them, and tightening pricing.

When I took it over, it was basically a 24/7 job – I was dispatching nights and weekends and doing invoices by hand. Weekly invoicing alone was eating close to 10–12 hours per week. After I did this work, I brought on a small back-office team so I almost never touch the phones anymore, and we cut invoicing down to about 2 hours a week with clear SOPs and a simple system. It's still a hard business, but it's not a hostage situation anymore.

I also did a structured set of rate increases and cleaned up payment terms on our good accounts – nothing crazy – and didn't lose a single solid client, just got paid properly for what we were already doing.

This 8-week cleanup is basically the shortcut I wish I'd had then.