One of the best ways to get your mail to its destination is through a courier. Regular postal mail can often take at least 3 business days, or even up to a week or a few weeks depending on where you are sending your mail. With a courier, you are often assured a speedier, more secure delivery of any type of mail. You can even request overnight package delivery services, or same day deliveries from a courier service, and track your delivery’s progress.
Because courier services are considered a faster way to deliver mail, they are extremely popular in the United States. The U.S. courier industry produced more than $54 million in revenue in 2002 alone. Currently, the courier industry is valued at about $14.5 billion, and there several thousand establishments in the country. States like California own the highest number of courier services with more than 8,000. Many people use some of the larger, more popular ones such as FedEx, DHL, and UPS, but there are smaller, private courier services as well.
Couriers have existed for centuries in the form of messengers. In the middle ages, these messengers hand-delivered mail and packages to people, and relayed messages from royalty. They would often walk on foot from one city to another, carrying important information. Other messengers rode on horseback or bicycle to deliver mail. This has also continued today, and in many cities, there are still bicycle couriers, and even motorcycle couriers. With aircrafts, lorries, and trains, there are also much faster ways to send packages and mail around the world. For example, you can usually send any mail from the United States to a country in Europe within a day using an airmail courier.
Couriers are certainly not the cheapest delivery service, because they are highly specialized. An extremely large package could cost hundreds of dollars to send overnight depending on where it is sent. For this reason, the premium service that couriers offer is usually limited to time-sensitive mail, or mail that contains important information. For the average piece of mail, regular postal mail is good enough. But if you want to be sure that your package arrives safely and in a timely fashion, consider using a courier.