A delivery route with 30% more parcels does not take 30% longer. On published timings from central London parcel routes, it takes about 24% longer. That gap is the whole case for a lower parcel rate during peak, and it is smaller than it sounds.
Any cut of more than about 5% a parcel leaves the driver earning less for each hour on the route. The day pays more, because the day is longer. The hour pays less.
It matters because the margin is thin to begin with. Two recent studies of UK drivers, from the University of Sheffield and for Citizens Advice, show how much of a parcel rate is already taken up by costs and unpaid time before peak begins. This piece works through what peak volume adds, using published measurements only.
Where a parcel's time goes
The argument for volume deserves a fair hearing. During peak, more parcels go to the same streets. Stops are closer together, so the drive between them is shorter, and some addresses take more than one parcel.
But only the driving gets shorter. A detailed UK study followed 25 parcel routes in central London in October 2016. Each parcel took about 3.8 minutes on the route: on average 2.3 minutes parked, walking and at the door, and 1.5 minutes driving. US route data shows the same shape. Leaving out the run to and from the depot, about 56% of a route's time is spent at the kerb or the door rather than driving, and about 67% on routes entirely within city limits.
Parking, the walk, waiting for an answer, the handover and the scan take as long during peak as in March. Routing theory gives a rule of thumb for the rest: when stops are scattered across a fixed area, the shortest route grows roughly with the square root of the number of stops. Twice as many stops in the same streets cut the driving per stop by about 30%, not 50%.
Some of the London driving time is the run to and from the depot, which does not shrink at all. Applying the rule to all of it, as the figures here do, if anything overstates the saving.
The cut a busier route can absorb
Put the two together. A route that is 30% busier saves about 5% of the time per parcel, so it needs about 24% more hours. Even if the route doubles, the cut that keeps pay per hour level is under 12%.
Take a route 30% busier and try three cuts. At 5% less a parcel, the day pays about 23% more and pay per hour holds. At 10% less, the day pays 17% more and each hour about 5% less. At 15% less, the day pays about 11% more and each hour about 11% less. Beyond the first few per cent, the volume has not made up for the rate. The longer day has.
Some things move these figures. If more of the extra parcels go to addresses already on the route, the saving is larger. Loading and depot time soften the fall, because they are spread over more parcels: for a nine-hour day that starts with an hour and a half of loading, a route 30% busier can absorb a cut of nearer 8%. Longer loading, depot waits and failed deliveries work the other way. No published study measures how much denser routes actually become during peak, which is why our peak offer checker asks for your own hours.
A lower rate does not always look like a cut
Everything above assumes a straight cut to the parcel rate, offered with the extra volume as the reason. That is the easiest kind to see. Two other ways of paying for a route can lower what each parcel earns during peak without any rate being cut.
Paid per drop instead of a parcel rate. The Citizens Advice research notes that some companies count drops rather than parcels, so a driver can be paid once for several parcels delivered to the same address. What each parcel earns then depends on how many parcels each address takes. If one drop in ten takes a second parcel on a normal day and one in four during peak, each parcel earns about 12% less, with no change to the rate per drop. The second parcel at a door is one of the quickest on the route, because the parking, the walk and the knock are already done. It is also the parcel that per-drop pay leaves unpaid, so part of the efficiency a busier route brings never reaches the driver's pay.
A day rate with a parcel expectation. Day rates are less common: in the same research, 12% of responses came from drivers paid by the hour or the day. A guaranteed day rate protects earnings on a quiet day, but unless the agreement says otherwise it does not fix the workload. If the day rate stays the same while the parcels expected rise by 30%, each parcel earns 23% less. Every extra hour the busier route takes is unpaid, so pay per hour on the route falls by about a fifth. Across a nine-hour day that starts with an hour and a half of loading, it falls by about a sixth.
Whichever way a route is paid, the test is the same: divide the pay by the parcels and by the hours, for a normal day and for a peak day, and compare.
The hours run out
For van parcel work in Great Britain, the domestic drivers' hours rules allow 10 hours of driving and 11 hours on duty in a working day, and parcel delivery is not among the exemptions. The duty limit does not apply on a day without driving, or in a week when the driver drives no more than 4 hours on every day. How duty is counted also differs for employed and self-employed drivers.
A nine-hour day that starts with an hour and a half of loading comes to about 10.8 hours when the route is 30% busier. At 40% busier it is about 11.4 hours, past the duty limit.
When the day cannot stretch, the week does. In the Sheffield survey of 1,413 car and van drivers, four in five self-employed drivers already worked six days a week, and one told the researchers of working 42 consecutive days between November and December without a day off.
Little room to start with
Peak arrives on top of pay that is already tight. In the Sheffield survey, 35% of self-employed drivers estimated they earn less than the National Minimum Wage, and sorting, loading, depot waits and failed deliveries go without additional pay. In the Citizens Advice research, by Spark Insight with 50 self-employed drivers, average earnings of £15.26 an hour fell to £10.36 once running costs and unpaid hours were counted. Longer-serving drivers reported that "pay rates have reduced over time while parcel volumes and targets have increased".
Neither study names a company. They describe a way of paying drivers, not the decisions of any one network.
The operator's side of peak
For an operator running routes for a network, peak usually means extra vans and drivers as well as heavier routes. One extra van at a courier hirer's published weekly rates (before VAT), pro-rata insurance and one employed driver come to roughly £770 a week with a short-wheelbase van and a 40-hour week, and £1,080 with a long-wheelbase van and a 50-hour week, before fuel. Other hirers publish higher rates, and the large rental firms publish none. Rental terms can exclude use "for hire or reward", so the cheapest hire may not be usable for parcel work without courier cover.
Since 1 October 2026, right to work checks reach beyond employees to individual sub-contractors and people supplied through online platforms. Every new peak driver engaged since then needs a check before the first drop. Liability can also fall on a business further up a contracting chain, on an online matching service, or on a business that allows substitution. The civil penalty is up to £60,000 per illegal worker, with a starting point of £45,000 for a first breach.
Some of that cost is shared. A few drivers in the Citizens Advice research mentioned being paid "higher rates for bank holidays and at Christmas", and a 2024 employment tribunal judgment records a courier company paying a driver "a daily rate of £113 initially, together with a seasonal peak amount of £15.75". How much a network contributes is a matter for each contract, and those contracts are not published.
Peak is more efficient. How is the saving shared?
Nobody needs to dispute that busier routes are more efficient per parcel. The useful question about any peak offer is how that efficiency is shared. A rate held level gives all of it to the driver, as more pay per hour. A peak premium or support payment adds to it. A cut smaller than the time saved shares it. A cut larger than the time saved leaves the driver earning less per hour, even though each parcel takes less time.
Senders see peak priced to the penny. Carriers that publish their peak surcharges charge them to the business sending the parcel. They run from 15p to 48p a parcel on standard services, the top of the range on residential deliveries, over windows that take in Black Friday and Christmas. The person receiving the parcel pays none of it directly, and sees only whether it arrives. Drivers and operators are not usually shown how that price relates to their own peak terms. The Sheffield researchers' recommendation to consider "sector-specific minimum earnings floors, with transparent rate-setting" speaks to the same question.
What to do before peak
- Test the offer per hour. Not per parcel, and not per day. The peak offer checker compares a normal day with the peak offer, whether it is a parcel rate, a rate per drop or a day rate, and shows the rate that would hold your pay per hour.
- Get the peak terms in writing. The rates, any support payment, and the dates each one applies.
- Price the extra capacity, and agree before peak how it is paid for. Spare vans, standby drivers, and insurance that covers hire and reward. The contract viability calculator tests a route against its full cost.
- Check every new driver's right to work before the first drop. That now includes individual sub-contractors and substitutes engaged since 1 October.
- Watch the hours. A busier route can take a long day past 11 hours on duty, so check whether the duty limit applies to you.
Sources and scope
Driver research: University of Sheffield, Centre for Decent Work, Work and Employment in UK Last Mile Parcel Delivery, launched in Parliament on 20 October 2026 (figures here are taken from the university's news release); Spark Insight for Citizens Advice, Research on parcel delivery driver pay and employment conditions, 14 September 2026, published by Citizens Advice later that month.
Route timings: Allen and others, "The scope for pavement porters: addressing the challenges of last-mile parcel delivery in London", Transportation Research Record 2672 (2018), for the time per parcel, and "Understanding the impact of e-commerce on last-mile light goods vehicle activity in urban areas: the case of London", Transportation Research Part D 61 (2018), for the routes themselves. For the United States, Merchan and others, "2021 Amazon Last Mile Routing Research Challenge: data set", Transportation Science (2022), covering 2018 routes in five US cities (4.5 hours of service against 3.6 hours of travel between stops on an average route; Schrader and others, 2023 preprint, report the same 56%), and Schrader and others (2024, preprint), for the 1,131 routes entirely within city limits in four of those cities (5.0 hours of service in 7.5 hours, leaving out the depot run). Routing theory: Beardwood, Halton and Hammersley, "The shortest path through many points", Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 55(4), 1959.
Rules, rates and cases: DVSA, Drivers' hours and tachographs: goods vehicles, section 2, Great Britain domestic rules on drivers' hours (updated 1 July 2026); Home Office, Employer's guide to right to work checks and Code of practice on preventing illegal working: Right to Work Scheme for employers (both 1 October 2026), and the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 (Commencement No. 4) Regulations 2026; GOV.UK guidance on penalties for employing illegal workers, the National Living Wage, holiday pay for irregular-hours and part-year workers, and employer National Insurance for 2026 to 2027; Elboghdady v RAA Couriers Ltd, employment tribunal (Scotland), case 8000807/2024, judgment of 17 October 2024. Van hire rates, rental terms and carriers' peak surcharges were read on the hirers', rental firm's and carriers' own published pages on 29 October 2026; the courier hirer's weekly rates (short-wheelbase to long-wheelbase, £117 to £234 before VAT, stated as indicative) were rechecked on 1 November 2026.
The model is a model, not a measurement. It applies the London route timings to a busier route in the same area and holds parcels per stop constant. Where loading and depot time are included they are held fixed, and failed deliveries are left out, although the research suggests both grow during peak. Cost figures are illustrative: van hire and insurance vary widely by vehicle, driver and provider. The per-drop and day-rate examples are arithmetic on stated assumptions, not measurements. Nothing here is legal, tax or employment advice, and it says nothing about any particular network's rates.