Insurance Claims of a Courier

Spending much more time on the road than the average driver, it is arguably not surprising that a courier might have to put in the odd insurance claim here and there. However the amount of driving they do also gives them a great deal of scope for some of the most interesting and amusing insurance claims around.

A Moo-ving Obstacle
There's no avoiding the fact that from time to time, courier work takes you out of the city, and drops you firmly in the middle of nowhere surrounded by countryside. This is exactly what happened to this poor chap who had a run-in with a moo-ving, moo-ing obstacle. Having collided with the cow, the courier was obliged to fill out the insurance company's documentation. When asked on the form what warning he gave, he stated 'a beep of the horn'. However, when asked what warning the other party gave, he simply wrote 'a moo.' Let's just hope the cow had insurance...

An Untimely Incident
Day to day life requires routine, and once we have established that routine we are often loathe to stray from it for anyone or anything. Between the alarm going off in the morning and leaving the house to go to work, the same chain of events occurs over the same timescale each and every day - or so one courier thought. Leaving the house at the same time as he did every day, the driver reversed out of his driveway to start work for the day, completely unprepared for the bus that was in his path. Very simply, the information on the insurance claim read: 'the bus was five minutes early.'

An End of Day Error
We all know how tiring a day at work can be, and particularly one that involves long stints on the road. Whilst the awareness of a courier on the road does not slip, we do all get just that little bit more clumsy as the day goes by, as one particular courier can vouch for. Going to lean out of the window towards the end of his day's driving, he got a bit of a surprise when it was not in fact open as he'd believed it was, but firmly shut. The wording of his insurance claim? 'I thought my window was down, but I found out it was up when I put my head through it.'

An Off-Duty Prang
But it's not just while he or she is working that a courier can come a cropper. After all, the arrival of the weekend does not automatically mean the hanging up of the car keys. More often than not it means the embarkation of the entire family on a weekend away somewhere; for example to visit the In-Laws and extended family. One poor fellow had survived a whole day with his mother-in-law, until home time that is, at which point it all went wrong. On reporting the accident to the insurance company he said simply, 'I pulled away, glimpsed my mother-in-law at the side of the road, and headed over the embankment.'

So, though the nature of courier work may mean that you end up with more insurance claims than you might like, they may well be of a slightly more interesting variety.

Norman Dulwich is a correspondent for Courier Exchange, the world's largest neutral trading hub for the same day courier and express freight exchange industry. Over 2,500 transport exchange businesses are networked together through their website, trading courier services and capacity in a safe 'wholesale' environment.