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Couriers and Messengers

  • Bright Outlook
  • Rapid Growth

Pick up and deliver messages, documents, packages, and other items between offices or departments within an establishment or directly to other business concerns, traveling by foot, bicycle, motorcycle, automobile, or public conveyance.

What you’d do

  • Deliver and pick up medical records, lab specimens, and medications to and from hospitals and other medical facilities.
  • Walk, ride bicycles, drive vehicles, or use public conveyances to reach destinations to deliver messages or materials.
  • Load vehicles with listed goods, ensuring goods are loaded correctly and taking precautions with hazardous goods.
  • Receive messages or materials to be delivered, and information on recipients, such as names, addresses, telephone numbers, and delivery instructions, communicated via telephone, two-way radio, or in person.
  • Deliver messages and items, such as newspapers, documents, and packages, between establishment departments and to other establishments and private homes.
  • Record information, such as items received and delivered and recipients' responses to messages.
  • Unload and sort items collected along delivery routes.
  • Sort items to be delivered according to the delivery route.

Skills that matter

  • Active Listening
  • Speaking
  • Time Management
  • Critical Thinking
  • Reading Comprehension
  • Service Orientation

How to get there

Little to some preparation: usually a high school diploma or GED, though some jobs do not need one

Also called

  • Courier
  • Driver
  • Lab Courier (Laboratory Courier)
  • Messenger
  • Delivery Driver
  • Mail Carrier

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