Self-Employed Courier Guide: Route Planning, Fuel Costs and Earnings

Quick Wins for Courier Drivers

Short on time? These are the changes that make the biggest difference:

• Plan your route before you leave. Saves 15-25% on miles. That's £800-1,300/year in fuel.
• Shop around for fuel. 10-15p/litre difference between cheapest and most expensive stations in the same area.
• Track your profit per mile, not just per day. It tells you which rounds are worth doing and which to drop.
• Stay within 8-10 miles of base. Beyond that, you're spending more time driving than delivering.
• Check your tyre pressure weekly. Under-inflated tyres cost you 3-5% more fuel. Free to fix.

Know Your Numbers

Most self-employed couriers know roughly what they earn per day. Fewer know what they earn per mile, and that's the number that actually matters.

Here's how to work it out:

1. Track your total miles for a week (use your van's trip counter or a mileage app).
2. Track your total earnings for the same week.
3. Track your total fuel spend.
4. Calculate: (Earnings - Fuel) ÷ Miles = Profit per mile.

As a benchmark, most multi-drop couriers in urban areas aim for £1.50-2.50 per mile after fuel. If you're below £1, your route is too spread out or your drop density is too low. If you're above £3, you've got a good thing going. Protect it.

This number also tells you which jobs to accept and which to turn down. A 30-stop round across a 25-mile radius might pay well in total but badly per mile. A 20-stop round in a tight 5-mile area might earn less but cost far less to run.

Route Planning: Stop Winging It

The difference between a planned route and an unplanned one is typically 15-25% fewer miles. On a 60-mile day, that's 10-15 miles saved. At current fuel prices, that's £3-5 per day, or roughly £800-1,300 per year if you're working five days a week.

Use our Route Optimiser to sequence your stops efficiently. Paste in your postcodes, and it calculates the shortest route through all of them. It handles up to 200 stops and takes about 10 seconds.

A few route planning principles that the tool can't teach you:

• Start with the furthest cluster and work back towards base. This way you're always heading roughly homeward, and if you run out of time, the remaining stops are close to your start point for tomorrow.
• Avoid right turns across busy roads. This sounds trivial but on urban rounds, waiting to turn right adds up. Plan loops that favour left turns and keep you flowing with traffic.
• Don't cross a dual carriageway twice to save one stop. Sometimes it's faster to leave a stop for later rather than fight through traffic to reach it out of sequence.
• Time your city centre stops. If you have drops in a town centre, do them before 9am or after 6pm. Parking is easier, traffic is lighter, and you'll be in and out in half the time.

Fuel: The Biggest Variable Cost

Fuel is typically 25-35% of a self-employed courier's costs, and it's the one you have most control over. Small savings compound fast over a year.

Finding cheaper fuel

Prices vary by 10-15p per litre between the cheapest and most expensive stations in the same area. Over a year of filling up, that's hundreds of pounds. Use our Fuel Prices tool to compare prices from major retailers near you or along your route.

Supermarket fuel is usually cheapest. Costco is consistently the cheapest of all if you have a membership and one nearby. Motorway services are almost always the most expensive, so avoid them unless you're genuinely about to run dry.

Driving for economy

Multi-drop driving is naturally fuel-hungry because of the constant stopping and starting. You can't change that, but you can improve things at the margins:

• Tyre pressure. Under-inflated tyres increase fuel consumption by 3-5%. Check weekly. Commercial van tyres should typically be at 50-60 PSI loaded. Check the sticker inside the driver's door for the exact figure.
• Weight. Every 50kg of unnecessary weight costs roughly 1% more fuel. Clear out the van at the end of each week. Those empty boxes and old parcels add up.
• Anticipate stops. Lifting off the accelerator early and coasting to a stop uses less fuel than braking hard at the last moment. In stop-start delivery driving, this makes a measurable difference.
• Don't idle. If you're going to be parked for more than 30 seconds (searching for a parcel, waiting for a customer), switch off. Modern diesel engines don't need warming up.

Defining Your Territory

If you have any choice over your delivery area, whether you're self-employed, running your own courier business, or choosing shifts on a platform, geography matters a lot.

Use our Radius Map to visualise your coverage area. Draw a circle around your base, and think about:

• Maximum sensible radius. For most urban multi-drop work, 8-10 miles from base is the sweet spot. Beyond that, you spend too much time driving between clusters and not enough time delivering.
• Drop density. Use Measure Distance to check how far apart your typical stops are. If the average gap between stops is over 1.5 miles, the area is too spread out for efficient multi-drop. Under 0.5 miles is ideal.
• Problem areas. Every round has spots that eat time: gated estates, narrow streets with no parking, tower blocks with broken lifts. Map them and factor the extra time into your planning. Some addresses are worth declining if you have the option.
• Depot or collection point distance. If you're collecting from a depot each morning, every mile between home and depot is dead mileage you're not being paid for. A round that starts 2 miles from home beats one that starts 12 miles away, even if the per-drop rate is slightly lower.

Should You Go Electric?

Electric vans are getting more practical for delivery work, but the maths depends entirely on your situation.

Where EVs already make sense

• Urban multi-drop with short distances between stops. Regenerative braking in stop-start driving means EVs are at their most efficient exactly where diesel vans are at their least efficient.
• You can charge at home overnight. Home charging on a standard tariff costs roughly 4-5p per mile. Diesel costs 18-25p per mile. That difference adds up to £3,000-5,000 per year for a full-time courier.
• Clean Air Zone routes. If your round takes you through a CAZ (Birmingham, Bath, Bristol, Bradford, and others), a diesel van is paying £8-10 per day in charges. An EV pays nothing.

Where EVs don't work yet

• Long-range rural rounds. If you're covering 150+ miles per day across rural areas, current electric van ranges (100-200 miles depending on load and weather) make it tight. Running out of charge with 20 parcels still on board is not an option.
• No home charging. If you rely on public chargers, the cost advantage mostly disappears. Rapid chargers cost 60-80p per kWh, which works out at 15-20p per mile. That's barely cheaper than diesel.
• Heavy loads. Battery weight reduces payload. A diesel Transit carries about 1,400kg. The electric e-Transit carries about 1,100kg. If you're delivering heavy goods, that 300kg difference matters.

If you're considering the switch, use our EV Charging Finder to check the charging infrastructure along your regular routes. Look for chargers near your usual break spots. If there's a rapid charger at the supermarket where you'd stop for lunch anyway, that's free refuelling time.

Tracking What Matters

Keep a simple weekly spreadsheet with these columns:

Metric	Why It Matters
Total drops	Volume of work completed
Total miles	Wear, fuel, and maintenance costs scale with miles
Fuel spend	Your biggest variable cost
Earnings	Gross income before costs
Profit per mile	The number that tells you if a round is worth doing
Drops per hour	Your efficiency (aim for 8-12 in urban areas)
Failed deliveries	Each one costs you time and a return trip

After a month, you'll see patterns. You'll know which days of the week are most profitable, which areas earn you the most per mile, and where you're losing money. That data lets you make better decisions about which work to take on.

The Self-Employed Tax Side

If you're self-employed, you can claim fuel and vehicle costs against your tax bill. You have two options:

• Simplified expenses (mileage rate). Claim 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles, then 25p per mile after that. Simple, no receipts needed for fuel, but you can't also claim for insurance, repairs, or servicing separately.
• Actual costs. Claim the business proportion of all actual vehicle costs: fuel, insurance, servicing, tyres, depreciation. More paperwork, but usually works out higher if you're doing serious mileage.

Whichever method you choose, you must use it consistently. You can't switch between the two for the same vehicle. Talk to an accountant if you're not sure which is better for your situation. The difference can be over £1,000 per year in tax savings.

One thing that's not optional: you need to track your mileage regardless. HMRC can ask for evidence, and "about 30,000 miles" isn't good enough. A mileage log (even a simple spreadsheet) is essential.