Delivery · Manchester
Our partner couriers in Manchester collect your goods from your warehouse, your central kitchen or your wholesaler and hand them over to your customers, from the Northern Quarter to Salford, from Stockport to Bolton and out to Wigan.
Greater Manchester has no charging clean air zone, but its centre is hard to cross: several streets are open only to buses, black cabs and cycles, and some take vehicles only at set times. From the moment you book, we fit each handover into the window the address allows; if we cannot keep to it, we tell you there and then.
Manchester’s rules
In 2025, the government approved a Clean Air Plan with no charge in place of the planned Clean Air Zone. No vehicle pays a clean air charge anywhere in Greater Manchester, whatever its Euro standard. What constrains a delivery here is the traffic rules in the centre.
On Portland Street, King Street, Deansgate, Princess Street and Bridge Street, sections are reserved for buses, black cabs and cycles 24 hours a day; on Oxford Road, from 6am to 9pm every day. A van that drives through risks a £70 penalty, reduced to £35 if paid within 21 days. Our routes go around them.
In the Northern Quarter, Thomas Street is open to vehicles only from 6am to 10am, then from 6pm to 7pm, behind removable barriers. A delivery to that street goes into one of those two windows, and we confirm which one when you book.
The council has limited many residential and built-up streets to 20 mph, and the A57 Regent Road has gone from 40 to 30 mph. Our planning and routing algorithms work out the time of each handover at those speeds.
Your customers, restaurants, caterers and shops, want their products before they open. We collect your goods at night or before dawn, from your central kitchen or from the wholesaler they leave from, for example at New Smithfield Market in Openshaw, where wholesalers open from 2.30am on weekdays, depending on the business and the season. Then we deliver to your customers before they open to the public.
Local rules checked in October 2026.
Manchester and its conurbation
Manchester charges no clean air fee. What slows a delivery here is the layout of the centre: bus gates that close sections of Deansgate, King Street or Portland Street to vans, day and night and often in one direction only; sections of Oxford Road closed to vans from 6am to 9pm; Thomas Street, in the Northern Quarter, which opens only at certain hours. Around it, a conurbation of ten boroughs stretches from Wigan to Tameside. In Manchester, a delivery succeeds or fails on its route and its timing.
Your goods travel in a vehicle reserved for your job, from the collection point to your recipients, with no depot or sorting centre in between. Most of the time they go not to one address but to several: we group them into a round whose order allows for closed streets and access hours. That is how our same-day delivery works, from a van to a 20 m³ truck.
Most of our work is refrigerated transport, chilled or frozen. Central kitchens produce at night, the wholesalers at New Smithfield open well before daybreak, and restaurants, shops and supermarkets want their chilled and frozen products before they open to the public. Our night deliveries fit into that gap.
A closed street, a recipient who is out, a loading bay that is taken: it is not for your teams to call the courier and then the customer. That follow-up takes more time than the journey itself, and it is the part we take on. You can reach someone on our team every day, 6am to 10pm.
Whether you hold stock in Trafford, Oldham or Wigan and deliver into the city centre, or ship from Manchester to other parts of the country, we run either round: we deliver everywhere in the United Kingdom.
What we do in Manchester
Same-day delivery has its page because the centre’s bus gates and access hours decide when a handover can happen; refrigerated transport, because its rounds start at night, at wholesalers and central kitchens. Our other services work in Manchester as they do everywhere we deliver.
We collect and deliver within the day, from a van to a 20 m³ truck, on a route that avoids the bus gates in the centre.
See the serviceWe carry your chilled and frozen products at night or early in the morning, from the wholesaler or central kitchen to your restaurants, shops and supermarkets.
See the serviceFrequently asked questions
Yes. We cover the ten boroughs of Greater Manchester: Manchester and Salford, then Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan. Beyond them, we deliver everywhere in the United Kingdom.
No. Greater Manchester has no charging Clean Air Zone: the plan approved in 2025 does not include one, and no clean air charge applies in the region. Nothing on that front goes into the price of your delivery.
A van cannot use the bus gate sections of Oxford Road between 6am and 9pm: they are reserved for buses, black cabs and cycles every day. Our partners take another route, and the handover time we give you when you book allows for it.
On a yellow line where the Traffic Regulation Order allows loading, the courier unloads for as long as it takes, then leaves straight away. They never stop during a loading ban shown by marks on the kerb: the penalty can reach £70. In the city of Manchester, loading that is likely to last more than an hour calls for a dispensation: we tell you when you book whether a handover needs one.
Yes. At New Smithfield Market, wholesalers open from 2.30am Monday to Saturday, depending on the business and the season, and the market may check a vehicle before letting it onto the site. We collect when your order is ready, from the wholesaler or the central kitchen, and the round delivers to your customers before they open to the public.
Join Shippr’s partner couriers and choose jobs starting from or going to Manchester and the nine other boroughs.
Tell us which boroughs your customers are in, which of them are in the streets of the centre, from Deansgate to the Northern Quarter, and when each one takes deliveries. We will come back with the proposed vehicle, the order of the stops and a time for each handover, bus gates and access hours included.