Could buses carry parcels again in the UK?

[Ken H]

Looking at old bus timetables, to many bus companies, parcels were important.

Could this idea make a comeback? Or is it a non starter with OPO?

 

[GusB]

Looking at old bus timetables, to many bus companies, parcels were important.

Could this idea make a comeback? Or is it a non starter with OPO?

One person operation isn't the issue; parcels were certainly carried on Scottish Bus Group services until the late 80s or early 90s. I can't remember exactly when they stopped, but it was my mother's preferred method for sending Christmas parcels, and cheaper than Royal Mail.

It was probably privatisation and splitting the companies off to separate purchasers that killed off the parcels. I dare say it could be done again, but you'd need to have a central organisation to ensure proper coverage and every operator would need to sign up to it.

The lack of offices at bus stations (and indeed the lack of bus stations in certain places) would also be an issue as you'd need someone to handle the parcels. At a more local level, many of the shops which acted as agents are gone; there was a Mace shop in my village opposite one of the bus stops where parcels could be sent and received, but it's long gone.

That's even before you consider that there's so much more competition in that market now, and it does door-to-door.

 

[robertclark125]

The only options available would be collection and drop off at bus depots. And they can be a fair bit away.

 

[edwin_m]

The only options available would be collection and drop off at bus depots. And they can be a fair bit away.

And how many buses pass by more than one depot?

 

[RT4038]

Looking at old bus timetables, to many bus companies, parcels were important.

Could this idea make a comeback? Or is it a non starter with OPO?

As @GusB has pointed out, the world has moved on too much for this ever to come back. Most of the parcels in those days tended to be from Market town/City to villages - prescriptions, motor parts to Scripps Garage etc, rather than parcels crossing the breadth of the country. The bus industry doesn't have the infrastructure to cope with it anymore, and the cost of re-establishment more than the likely revenues, especially with the competition of parcel delivery vans now.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

How big a business was it?

I have seen reference to it in Terms and conditions but I cannot ever recall seeing an unaccompanied parcel being loaded or unloaded on a bus, nor seen any transaction happening at a travel office or local shop. Was it an NBC/SBG thing? - I was brought up in a land of municipals.

 

[GusB]

How big a business was it?

I have seen reference to it in Terms and conditions but I cannot ever recall seeing an unaccompanied parcel being loaded or unloaded on a bus, nor seen any transaction happening at a travel office or local shop. Was it an NBC/SBG thing? - I was brought up in a land of municipals.

I have no knowledge of how things were done in NBC land, but in SBG land parcels traffic was fairly significant. At my local bus station (Elgin) there were a couple of wheeled laundry-type baskets that were used, and they'd often be full. The Inverness - Aberdeen Citylink service would pull in and parcels would be loaded and unloaded.

From there the parcels would then go onto local services and be dropped off at local agents. In my village, the driver would sometimes toot and wait for somebody to come out of the shop, or if the shop staff were expecting a parcel they'd often be waiting at the stop. Sometimes the driver would take the parcel over to them.

We'd send parcels to Glasgow, phone my aunt to say it was on the way and she would collect it from Buchanan Bus Station a couple of days later. It always appeared to be a fairly efficient operation.

I wonder if any of the independents were ever involved where there was no SBG service (eg West Coast Motors).

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

Talking of municipals Manchester Corporation carried parcels on its trams (and had a Royal Mail postbox), but on abandonment in 1949 opted for its own van delivery service rather than using buses. This continued into SELNEC and GMT days (although much reduced), with the final vehicles at Parrs Wood Depot operating until the late 1970s. It certainly helped that GUS was right next to Hyde Road Depot, providing extensive catalogue business.

 

[Simon75]

In the late 80s I don't remember Crosville in Macclesfield do parcels, but the only buses I used was to get to school on the local services

 

[GusB]

Talking of municipals Manchester Corporation carried parcels on its trams (and had a Royal Mail postbox), but on abandonment in 1949 opted for its own van delivery service rather than using buses. This continued into SELNEC and GMT days (although much reduced), with the final vehicles at Parrs Wood Depot operating until the late 1970s. It certainly helped that GUS was right next to Hyde Road Depot, providing extensive catalogue business.

That's a lie; I was nowhere near Hyde Road Depot!

It does answer the question as to whether municipals were involved, though. How extensive was Manchester's parcel network - was it purely a local affair, or did it tie in with the wider national network?

My mum was a GUS (Great Universal Stores) customer for many years and I recall that her parcels were usually delivered by White Arrow vans. I'm not sure if they're still a thing, but GUS was eventually assimilated into Shop Direct and their courier of choice was NoDel Yodel.

 

[Manclad83]

PMT were offering this service in the late 90’s. I remember seeing it advertised in a X18/23 Hanley-Sheffield timetable.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Technically, some buses do carry mail. Royal Mail delivery personnel often use service buses to get to and from their rounds.

 

[Ken H]

I remember parcels on Pennine Buses. Including a basket of hens!

 

[robertclark125]

For GUS, I believe white arrow still exists.

 

[Jordan Adam]

It still happens to some extent. Stagecoach Bluebird's Service 201 is still used to deliver newspapers to the Deeside area.

Likewise until a few years ago Stagecoach Strathtay vehicles were used to move documents between Ninewells Hospital in Dundee and Perth Royal Infirmary. 22268, 27548, 27549 & 27551 were as such fitted with lockable boxes over the front wheel arch behind the cab for this purpose.

Stagecoach in Fife (Strathtay) 22268 YBZ 818 in Dundee.

Formerly registered V268 ESX.

www.flickr.com

Stagecoach Strathtay 27548 SP58 BZB

27548 resting at Royal Victoria Hospital on service 333.

www.flickr.com

27551 SP58BZE seen in Dundee

27551 SP58BZE seen in Dundee

www.flickr.com

 

[Clydeflyer]

I have no knowledge of how things were done in NBC land, but in SBG land parcels traffic was fairly significant. At my local bus station (Elgin) there were a couple of wheeled laundry-type baskets that were used, and they'd often be full. The Inverness - Aberdeen Citylink service would pull in and parcels would be loaded and unloaded.

From there the parcels would then go onto local services and be dropped off at local agents. In my village, the driver would sometimes toot and wait for somebody to come out of the shop, or if the shop staff were expecting a parcel they'd often be waiting at the stop. Sometimes the driver would take the parcel over to them.

We'd send parcels to Glasgow, phone my aunt to say it was on the way and she would collect it from Buchanan Bus Station a couple of days later. It always appeared to be a fairly efficient operation.

I wonder if any of the independents were ever involved where there was no SBG service (eg West Coast Motors).

As well as the massive laundry baskets of parcels being loaded into the boots of Alexander Y-Types (if they had them) I remember in Dundee and Perth we also used to have newspaper deliveries. All services leaving Dundee about 3pm Mon-Sat would have bundles of the evening paper on them. Some were massive and dropped at a stop, or a paper boy would meet the bus, but I remember on our run (16 Dundee to Perth) most were small quantities rolled up like poster tubes. If you were good you could open the door or window and fling them at the shop doors without pausing too much. Not sure how we were compensated - other than the driver got a free paper - but we carried them on the Stagecoach 16s that ran the shared service with Strathtay.

Stagecoach also carried packets up and down to Pitlochry for the NHS in the early 1990s... samples and the like.

I seem to remember the parcels bit of SBG companies Northern and Fife got spun off as a separate company in Stagecoach called Bluebird Parcels, then Pegasus Parcels or Pegasus Express... I've a memory of vans and trucks in Stagecoach stripes at one point with a Pegasus logo with the subtitle 'Part of the Stagecoach Group' and there was a bus and door-to-door aspect to it. Not sure if that left the group and evolved into the Pegasus that exist today (do a lot of Amazon stuff in Scotland). Can't find any images online of these vans and trucks in Stagecoach colours though?

 

[ntypeman]

PMT were offering this service in the late 90’s. I remember seeing it advertised in a X18/23 Hanley-Sheffield timetable.

I don't remember that & I worked for PMT from 1995... I have a mate who was the Commercial Manager, I'll quiz him on it...

 

[AndyW33]

As far as I can remember there was no national parcels by bus network in England or Wales The NBC companies I worked for certainly carried parcels but they didn't interchange parcels with other group companies, in fact they didn't interchange parcels at all in most parts of the country - if there wasn't a direct bus between the origin and destination towns/villages of a parcel, the parcels agent/bus station office/driver/conductor wouldn't accept it.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I don't recall parcels in what was my local NBC subsidiary after de-reg. Before then, it was really just evening papers being sent out.

 

[RT4038]

As far as I can remember there was no national parcels by bus network in England or Wales The NBC companies I worked for certainly carried parcels but they didn't interchange parcels with other group companies, in fact they didn't interchange parcels at all in most parts of the country - if there wasn't a direct bus between the origin and destination towns/villages of a parcel, the parcels agent/bus station office/driver/conductor wouldn't accept it.

There was no national parcels network, but several companies (certainly in the south/midlands area) joined together their networks to cover a wider area. In the NBC company I worked for parcels could be consigned inter route and inter company, but they would always go via a bus station enquiry/parcels office for interchange. The main use of the service was from town/city to villages of prescriptions, motor parts to rural garages, individual items ordered on account from town shops etc, plus rolls of (evening) newspapers. In some more dispersed rural areas, some daytime trips may have half the seats taken up with parcels.

With the more affluent people using cars, the decline of 'accounts' at shops, rural motor garages closing in favour of more reliable cars and dealers doing servicing work, town centre motor factors moving to suburban industrial estates so no longer close to the bus station, rural shop (parcel agents) closures, costs of the parcel 'boys' (in the case of my first employer two part time retired men) at both bus company and consignor meant that the traffic was reducing. One man buses on the busier routes meant demands for increased running times (and therefore increased costs), plus the security issue of drivers leaving buses/money/ticket machine unattended whilst delivering to an agent. A further complication occurred when VAT was introduced, and conductors had to be issued with separate parcels tickets (all having to be audited and accounted for) as it was no longer acceptable to simply issue a 'Setright' ticket for the parcel charge (passenger fares not being VATable, but goods conveyance was). Some companies tried quite hard to drum up parcels trade but it was a losing battle and the costs eventually outweighed the revenue.

Even London Transport (Country buses) and later London Country Bus Services had a parcels service well into the 70s.

Last time I carried a parcel, as a conductor, about 1977, was a box of Wimpy bread rolls from one town to another, as they were running out!!!

 

[Baxenden Bank]

I don't remember that & I worked for PMT from 1995... I have a mate who was the Commercial Manager, I'll quiz him on it...

PMT definitely offered a parcels service. I recall it being 50p in the end. I saw it advertised somewhere, probably a 232 timetable leaflet, which is what brought the service to my attention. That would be sometime after 1990.

 

[PeterC]

In the late 80s I don't remember Crosville in Macclesfield do parcels, but the only buses I used was to get to school on the local services

They did in Wales in the 70s.

There was what seemed to be a regular traffic in day old chick's from mid Wales to the North. The boxes would be left at the roadside for transfer to a different route.

Early services would carry daily papers from stations to village newsagents.

These days I think it's a case of "if I was going there I wouldn't start from here"

 

[Typhoon]

There was no national parcels network, but several companies (certainly in the south/midlands area) joined together their networks to cover a wider area. In the NBC company I worked for parcels could be consigned inter route and inter company, but they would always go via a bus station enquiry/parcels office for interchange. The main use of the service was from town/city to villages of prescriptions, motor parts to rural garages, individual items ordered on account from town shops etc, plus rolls of (evening) newspapers. In some more dispersed rural areas, some daytime trips may have half the seats taken up with parcels.

With the more affluent people using cars, the decline of 'accounts' at shops, rural motor garages closing in favour of more reliable cars and dealers doing servicing work, town centre motor factors moving to suburban industrial estates so no longer close to the bus station, rural shop (parcel agents) closures, costs of the parcel 'boys' (in the case of my first employer two part time retired men) at both bus company and consignor meant that the traffic was reducing. One man buses on the busier routes meant demands for increased running times (and therefore increased costs), plus the security issue of drivers leaving buses/money/ticket machine unattended whilst delivering to an agent. A further complication occurred when VAT was introduced, and conductors had to be issued with separate parcels tickets (all having to be audited and accounted for) as it was no longer acceptable to simply issue a 'Setright' ticket for the parcel charge (passenger fares not being VATable, but goods conveyance was). Some companies tried quite hard to drum up parcels trade but it was a losing battle and the costs eventually outweighed the revenue.

Very interesting, thanks. Midland Red certainly had a parcel service, which they pushed heavily - it was something new to me when I moved to Coventry at the end of the '60s. You are right about rural shop closures, I remember seeing a lists of agents once, in really obscure villages - they almost certainly wouldn't have a village shop now. Parcels were stored in the cubby hole under the stairs (in D9s) if I remember correctly. This would create another problem, most buses I use have inadequate storage space for passengers as it is. The metal tray just inside the door (usually behind the first seat) is for the Metro - passengers expect that now and it is in a (fairly) sensible place. Also how secure is it for an item in transit to be placed there - doesn't a driver have enough to do without checking that a parcel is still in situ. Just behind that is often the space for wheelchairs. The heyday of buses carrying parcels was well before wheelchair users found most forms of public transport anything other disability unfriendly.

To be filed in the 'Do you remember ....' category.

 

[johncrossley]

As the name suggests, PostBus used to carry mail and the buses still have the post horn logo, but as I understand it the mail is now delivered by a separate company within Swiss Post.

 

[Whisky Papa]

Although I can remember seeing tables of rates for parcels in various NBC timetable books in the mid-to-late 1970s, I think the only place I ever saw it in action was when on holiday in Devon and Cornwall. I recall evening newspapers being dropped off at village newsagents on one journey near Truro in 1979, it was operated by a Leyland National and I suspect I was coming in from Falmouth.
One slightly annoying feature of the WNOC parcels operation was that on Bristol RE/LH buses, the front nearside double seat was sometimes occupied by a fibreglass (?) parcels pen so that the driver could keep an eye on them.

 

[robertclark125]

The border courier services in the Scottish Borders carried parcels well into the 2000s. First lowland used special optare metroriders that had a luggage space at the back, separated from the seating area.

 

[DunsBus]

The border courier services in the Scottish Borders carried parcels well into the 2000s. First lowland used special optare metroriders that had a luggage space at the back, separated from the seating area.

The Border Couriers, or the Couriers as we called them, last ran in 2007. Operators over their existence were as follows:

Scottish Omnibuses (Eastern Scottish) 1979-1985
Lowland Scottish/Lowland 1985-1992
Austin of Earlston & Munro's of Jedburgh 1992-1997
First Lowland 1997-2002
Munro's of Jedburgh 2002-2007

As well as parcels, the Couriers also carried medical supplies. You could load them on to the bus at the hospital in Duns in the morning and they would either be in Peebles, or one of the Edinburgh hospitals, by the afternoon. The Borders General Hospital acted as the hub as all of the Courier services fed into it and it was here that supplies would either be loaded, offloaded or swapped over between buses before they set off again on their return journeys.

As far as I know, these services were unique in the UK.

 

[robertclark125]

My local operator, Stagecoach East Scotland, has told me that the SBG type parcels service, the topic of this thread, only ended in their area in 2007. I have to say, it certainly wasn't widely advertised after 1990. In fact, I can't recall any Fife Scottish timetables, after the 1991 Stagecoach takeover, advertising a parcels service. However, some Leyland Leopards had parcels adverts in the passenger saloons, but obviously pre dating the Stagecoach takeover, and when vehicles were repainted, these adverts disappeared.

 

[randyrippley]

One key thing preventing parcel deliveries now: low floor buses don't have boots, so there's no secure storage.

The market has changed as well. Back in the 1960s the few parcels carried by the local bus co, Hutchings & Cornelius were all local: car parts from the local main dealer, cut flowers, intershop transfers from the main CO-OP in Yeovil to village stores. That's all gone: parcels are national now, not local distribution

 

[Baxenden Bank]

I don't remember that & I worked for PMT from 1995... I have a mate who was the Commercial Manager, I'll quiz him on it...

Update from previous response.

My copy of the Conditions of Carriage, dated July 1993, refers to unaccompanied parcels.
Available on specific routes only: 106, 232, 238, 239, 250, 251, 252, 253, X23, X42, X43, X60/260.

And the best bit:

"consigners must load the parcel themselves, pay a fee of 50p (for which they should receive two dog tickets from the driver) and must arrange for someone to collect the parcel from the bus at its destination".