Typical Courier Day

Mark Bossert: Hi, it's Mark from Top Local. I'm here with Mark Huggan, Phantom Couriers in Vancouver. Vancouver's favourite couriers. One of the 100 fastest growing companies in BC. They're growing right across the entire country of Canada. They're booming busy, and we're going to talk about a typical day in the life of a courier today.

How are you doing Mark? 

Mark Huggan: Doing good, how are you? 

Mark Bossert: Good. So there's some new things happening because of this whole pandemic thing that we're in and social distancing. How was today? 

Mark Huggan: Well, today was pretty standard operating and huge, gigantic. I just brought up my list of clients and just alphabetized and I'm going to start with 'A' and give you a few examples of what we were doing.

Working for law firms today, straight up doing real estate transactions and banking, gotta get that done. 

Same law firm, which is a family practice. They do family law - with COVID, there's lots of mom and dad don't live together, don't live together, they got the kids, it's better to have sets of rules. It's important. And so the couriers are going between the two lawyers and helping everything get settled down and the sooner the better, right? Because when two parties need to agree on something, the third party in the middle is where the money is. So working for the lawyers, it's a lot of family law going on right now, everything has to be redone. And it's super important to the mom and dad and kids that, that gets done smooth, then we're here to help. 

House builders. They started building all those spec homes and that is totally different, right. Nobody knows what to do with the market. They're doing staging things to try and sell them, like removing showcase pianos for staging, which is a big deal. Helping out the stagers.

We're doing the millwork, we're bringing back counters and cabinets and doors and stuff like that, working for all the mill workers. 

And of course, the financing. A lot of a spec guys get construction loans, very important. They pay them back super quick, but they're always back and forth. When any change happens that has money, that change notice has to go to the city. It has to go to the guy that's holding the mortgage. Cause if they wanna increase it by a day, they can, and if they're late with the courier, super big trouble. We've worked like that with a lot of builders and it keeps them in the cashflow because they're expensing like mad, you know. Like huge. It could be millions of dollars of a build, you know. 

We got people changing locks, now, right. A lot of people are leaving. Employees with keys are not returning them, so the locksmiths are just going crazy. At UBC, there's over a million doors. So we're out to UBC, constantly dropping off the locks. The locksmithing trucks go out there  in the morning, and then they're like, they forgot a box of fobs or something. Always to UBC for locksmiths, really huge. 

And then of course, there's little eCommerce businesses, like a local jeweller, she had to ship stuff out, down to the United States, to mail it out to our customers that are still buying. So Etsy and Shopify stuff are going good. 

The animation studios are just kicking it off, because with the film industry, paring it down and making smaller sets and bigger studios. It's going to be a lot of diminishing returns. The animation studios are doing a lot of work for live action, so there'll be more CGI green screen, Vancouver is well known for that. Just tons of it, like all day, everything. 

From desks and chairs to mouses to software, to cables, to scripts, to everything. We're moving tons and tons of that kind of stuff. And with everybody moving around with all these big studios, lots of UPS batteries for computers, just in case there's any weird power outages. 

Because in a big studio they've got them, but they can't count on an apartment. Just having a car hitting a power pole and zap, something's gone. It could be millions of dollars of hard work for a team. Who knows where the editing processes. So when we get those calls, it's like, Oh, I didn't even know that happened. You know? 

Just lots of good sending of course, up to Bella Bella today, we sent for the BCCDC, lots of pharmaceutical drugs because they still have to get to remote areas. And now that the airplanes are flying, they're loading up with as much non-perishable medical supplies as they can get in case. More lawyers, lots more pharmaceuticals. And it just repeats as we go down the list. 

They're calling couriers more and more. Offices are decentralizing. Pharmaceuticals are going up, and then life is normal. There's people that are starting to get married and stuff, and we're moving around wax castings for engagement rings and diamond rings and stuff like that. That's nice to see that people are able to get married again. The diamond trade's always been good to Phantom. Phantom's always been good to it. Tons of contact lenses, glasses, sunglasses, for Clearly Contacts. So the list goes on, and then it goes on, and on, and it scrolls down forever. 

We did 30 standup desks today. So we rolled a big three ton truck into a distribution place in Coquitlam, and picked him up and dropped them off from Coquitlam to North Van, and looped all the way back through Vancouver up to New Westminster. So lots of standup desks. They're heavy. And popular. Get into the stand up desk business, people. There you are. 

Mark Bossert: I'd get in the courier business. Apply for a job at Phantom. They're always hiring. There's the guys to call. And it's a business that is always interesting. There's always a challenge is always a problem to be solved. If you're a problem solver, or you need a problem solved, even more important. Call them. They'll get it done. (604) 899-5447. Or Canada wide +1 844-899-5447 Phantom Couriers. Any package anywhere, Phantom Couriers gets it there. Thanks Mark. 

Mark Huggan: You bet. Problem solvers.