Now before you panic, this isn't going to be some huge academic analysis by an eminent historian of courier services and/or technology! It's a light-hearted and affectionate stroll through the early technology that arrived in the transport and related industries back in the 1960s and 70s. If you're above about 45 years of age this may bring back some happy (?) memories, if you're not, it may all be very hard to believe.
Pre-history
OK, technology didn't start with the 60s and 70s. Even going way back, transport and courier companies had things such as telegrams and the telephone to help them communicate. To those that think computers began with Bill Gates, be prepared for a shock. Computers were being used in the business when Mr Gates was still in his pram. However, it's probably fair to say that before the later 1960s, technology was pretty much restricted to the telephone (often only available to the directors and perhaps heads of department) and a massive mainframe computer churning out the accounts. Contact with a courier driver? You had to hope they could find a public call box and had change. Trying to contact overseas? You had to ask the operator to connect you and sometimes even had to book the call, as all lines were busy.
Groovy systems
By the late 1960s and early 70s, most courier and transport companies were starting to see technological changes. Photocopiers (often huge things) were starting to appear in special 'print rooms' in many offices. These were often partnered up with a much-dreaded device called the Banda printer - something that looked as if it had just time-travelled from Victorian Britain. The idea was that you could type a form and then print it many times over using the Banda - what happened in reality was that you and your papers got covered in ink and various forms of other fluids it used to go about its terrifying work.
Then there was the telex. A revolution in its day, it allowed you to type lengthy documents (e.g. manifests, collection notes, carnets etc) and convert them all to punched-tape. When complete, you just dialled out over the telephone lines to another telex elsewhere in the world, fed your punched tape through and hey presto! Your document was printed off at the other end. In a way, it was a sort of pre-cursor to the fax and worked fine, er, except when it didn't! Tape jams and breakages were commonplace and physical fights erupted in some offices when an hour's tape production and typing were lost because someone trod on or spilled coffee over your tape before you'd had a chance to send it.
Oh yes, this period also saw the arrival of the first electronic calculators. Prior to that, the courier simply had to be very good at arithmetic, use a slide-rule or one of those phenomenal manual desk calculators that work by cranking a handle in the side. So, the arrival of the electronic calculator should have been good news and it was, except for the fact that they were expensive and many companies could only afford one. No prizes for guessing the early ones were often locked away in the manager's desk as a perk and you had to ask their permission to use it (and stay in his or her good books).
The lady's not for turning
During the 70s and into the early 1980s, things steadily improved, got smaller, more reliable and less messy. They also got cheaper and that meant most people started to get access to things like calculators, photocopiers and even started getting their own telephone handset on their desk. The very early office computers and PCs started to arrive, typewriters gave way to word processors and then PCs and by the early mid-80s the average office didn't look massively different to the office today. There was one exception though - the courier or driver.
Not much had changed in 20 years. Many offices still resounded to the cry "I don't know where he is!" or "why hasn't he called?" The biggest difference to, say, the early 1970s was that by the 1980s, more of the public phone boxes weren't in working order making it even harder to contact anyone 'on the road'. Then, in the mid 1980s, the first mobile phones arrived. OK, they were laughably large and heavy by today's standards but they simply transformed the transport world.
For the first time ever, excluding a relatively minor amount of radio use beforehand, the courier drivers and the offices were able to speak to each other. Gone, well almost, were the "I don't know what's happening" cries of dispatchers and offices. Suddenly, in the office you could get regular updates from your driver about the stationary traffic on the M6 around Birmingham.
A revolution
Of course, it didn't stop there and things like SATNAV, barcodes and auto-picking systems have all had a major impact but perhaps none have had quite the same revolutionary effect that the 80s had in finally connecting drivers to their offices. Of course, some individual couriers or drivers may lament the loss of freedom of the old days and those "we didn't have any change" excuses given after the event - you may think that but we couldn't possibly comment!
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