Choosing a courier in Pakistan: the questions to ask before you sign

Search for the best courier in Pakistan and you will find a dozen ranked lists, most of them written by people who have never booked a parcel. We are not going to add another ranking, for a simple reason: the right courier depends on where your customers live, what your parcels weigh, and how much volume you can promise — and those answers are different for every store.

What is the same for everyone is the set of questions. Ask these, get the answers in writing, and you can rank them yourself in an afternoon.

Two kinds of company, and the difference matters

Broadly, you are choosing between two shapes of business.

• The established national networks — TCS, Leopards, M&P, BlueEx, CallCourier and others. Deep coverage into smaller towns, long operating history, their own branch infrastructure.
• The ecommerce-first operators — PostEx, Trax, Rider, Swyft and similar. Built around online sellers specifically, usually with better dashboards, APIs, and in some cases faster or advanced payment of your COD money.

Neither category is automatically better. The networks tend to win on reach into hard destinations; the newer operators tend to win on cash-flow terms and software. Plenty of stores use one of each. We take no commission from any courier and this list is not a ranking — it is a starting point for the calls you are about to make.

The eight numbers to get in writing

Every one of these has bitten a seller who assumed it:

1. Delivery charge by weight band, for your actual typical parcel — and what the first band covers, since most stores never leave it.
2. Charges beyond the base rate: fuel adjustments, remote-area surcharges, and whether sales tax is added on top of the quoted figure.
3. COD service charge — a percentage of the amount collected, a flat fee, or both.
4. Return charge. What you pay when a parcel comes back refused. The single most under-asked question on this list.
5. Remittance cycle — how many days between the cash being collected and it reaching your bank, and which day of the week it lands.
6. Reattempt policy — how many delivery attempts before a parcel is returned, and whether reattempts cost extra.
7. Volume commitment — whether the rate you have been quoted depends on a monthly parcel count you have not hit yet.
8. Weight rounding — how a 0.6 kg parcel is billed. Rounding rules quietly move your whole cost base.

Put the answers in a spreadsheet with one column per courier. Rates move constantly and vary by negotiation, so anything you read online — including here — is a conversation starter, not a quote.

The remittance cycle is a loan you are giving them

This is the number new sellers underestimate. Between shipping a parcel and being paid for it, you have funded the stock, the packaging and the freight out of your own pocket. On a weekly cycle that gap is manageable. On a fortnightly one, growing fast, it is the reason a profitable store runs out of cash.

Work out roughly how much money will be sitting inside the courier's system at any moment: your average order value, times the orders you ship in a week, times the number of weeks in the cycle. If that figure frightens you, a shorter remittance cycle is worth more than a slightly better per-parcel rate.

Some ecommerce-focused couriers advance your COD money before the customer has paid, for a fee. That can be worth it when growth is limited by cash rather than by demand — just price the fee honestly against what it is buying you.

Budget for the tax the courier now deducts

Since the Finance Act 2025, couriers collecting cash on your behalf are required to withhold tax on what they collect and deposit it against your registration — and to check that you are registered before they onboard you at all. That comes out of your remittance, so it belongs in your margin calculation from day one rather than as a surprise on the first statement. We cover what is required and how the withholding works in our guide to registering an online business in Pakistan.

Coverage is not a map, it is a delivery rate

Every courier claims nationwide coverage. What you want to know is narrower: what percentage of parcels to my destinations actually get delivered, first attempt?

Look at where your orders come from. If a meaningful share go to smaller cities and towns, ask specifically about those districts — including whether they are served directly or handed to a third party for the last leg, because handovers are where parcels sit for days. If your orders are concentrated in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Faisalabad, almost anyone can serve you and you should optimise for price and remittance instead.

How returns come back tells you a lot

Ask what happens to a refused parcel: how many days before it is back with you, in what condition, and whether you are charged both legs. Ask whether you can call a customer before the parcel is returned to attempt a save. A courier that returns refused stock quickly and undamaged is worth paying slightly more for, because that stock is money sitting still.

And keep the return rate as your own number, measured monthly, not the courier's. Our COD guide covers the habits that bring it down — confirming orders the same day is the one with the largest effect.

The unglamorous software questions

• Can you book parcels in bulk, or is it one form at a time?
• Is there a tracking link you can send the customer that they can actually understand?
• Can you download a statement showing every parcel, its status and what was deducted?
• Is there an API, if you ever want your store to book pickups directly?
• Is there a named person you can call when a parcel goes missing, or only a helpline?

That last one matters more than the rest combined on the day it matters.

Run a real test before you commit

Do not move all your volume on the strength of a rate card. Split your next fifty or so orders between two couriers — ideally by giving each one a mix of easy and difficult destinations — and then compare four things:

1. Percentage delivered, first attempt
2. Average days from pickup to delivery
3. Percentage refused or returned
4. Total cost per successfully delivered order, after every charge and deduction

The fourth number is the only one that decides anything, and it is almost never the courier with the cheapest headline rate. A rate that is twenty rupees lower but returns five parcels in a hundred more is the expensive option.

Keep a second courier alive

Once you have a winner, do not close the other account. Strikes, city-level disruptions and sudden service problems are normal here, and a store with one courier and no fallback simply stops shipping. Keeping a small share of volume with a second operator keeps the account active and the rates honest.

How this works on LaunchLancer

We do not tie your store to a courier or take a cut of your shipping. Orders arrive in the dashboard with the customer's address and phone number, you book with whichever courier you have chosen, and you record the consignment number against the order as it moves through confirmed, packed and dispatched. Customers can look up their order from your storefront with an order number and email — no account required.

If you are still working out the money side, our cash on delivery guide covers the flow end to end, and the launch guide covers everything that has to be in place before your first parcel.