London Shuttle collects and delivers in London every Wednesday. Each of the 86 postcode areas we serve across England and Wales has its own weekly run day, everything travels through our Oxfordshire hub, and bookings close at 12:00 two days before collection. That one timetable explains almost everything about how the service works, so here it is in full.
One day for London, one day for everywhere else
The model is deliberately simple. A London van works every Wednesday, collecting outbound bookings from London addresses and delivering inbound ones. Regional runs then leave across the week, each covering its own slice of England and Wales. Your goods ride the London van one way and the regional van the other, meeting at the hub in the middle.
This is how we serve every London postcode and 86 destination areas without waste. No van waits around for a single customer, and no customer pays for a vehicle that is mostly empty.
The weekly timetable
| Run day | Where the van goes |
|---|---|
| Wednesday | London collections and deliveries, plus home counties areas such as Guildford, St Albans, Brighton and Canterbury on the same run |
| Thursday | Yorkshire, the North East and the East Midlands, including Leeds, Sheffield, York, Newcastle and Nottingham |
| Friday | The South West, the south coast and South Wales, including Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Cardiff |
| Saturday | Oxford, Reading, Swindon and Gloucester |
| Monday | The Midlands, including Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester and Milton Keynes |
| Tuesday | The North West, East Anglia and North Wales, including Manchester, Liverpool, Cambridge and Norwich |
Scottish postcodes are handled by our sister site Scotland Shuttle, and the booking form hands you across automatically with both postcodes already filled in.
What happens at the hub
Goods collected in London on Wednesday arrive at our Oxfordshire hub the same day. There they are checked against the manifest, sorted by destination run and staged for the right van. Every piece carries your booking reference, so a holdall bound for Leeds and a suitcase bound for Cardiff can share a London van in the morning and be on different regional vans within a day.
The same happens in reverse. Goods collected in Manchester on a Tuesday or Bristol on a Friday come back to the hub, join the next London run and are delivered on Wednesday.
How long transit takes
Out of London, collection is always a Wednesday and delivery follows on the destination's next run day. Thursday areas such as Leeds are next day. Friday areas such as Bristol take two days. Saturday areas such as Oxford take three. Monday areas such as Birmingham take five, and Tuesday areas such as Manchester take six. Home counties addresses on the Wednesday run are collected in the morning and delivered the same afternoon.
Into London, collection happens on your area's run day and delivery lands on the first Wednesday on or after it. From a Tuesday area that is next day. From a Monday area it is two days, from a Saturday area four, from a Friday area five and from a Thursday area six.
So Battersea to Leeds is collected Wednesday and delivered Thursday, while London to Manchester is the slowest lane at six days. If the timing matters, check your destination's run day before you plan anything else.
Cutoffs and choosing a run
Bookings close at 12:00 two days before collection. For a Wednesday London collection that means Monday at noon. When you book, the form shows the next three open runs for your lane and you pick the one that suits. Miss a cutoff and the next run is a week later, so if your tenancy ends on a fixed date it pays to book early.
Runs also have finite capacity. Month ends and the start and finish of university terms are the busy weeks, and a full run stays closed no matter how keen you are.
Why it costs less than a dedicated van
Hire a van and driver for yourself and you pay for the whole vehicle, the driver's whole day, fuel in both directions, London access charges and, very often, an empty return leg. All of that lands on one job even if the load is ten boxes in the corner of an empty van.
On a shuttle you pay for the space your pieces actually take on a vehicle that was making the journey anyway. The hub keeps vans full in both directions, and one Wednesday in London feeds every regional run that week. That is why Kerbside starts at £199 with up to four pieces included, a figure no dedicated vehicle from London can sensibly match.
The trade is flexibility. A dedicated van comes whenever you want. The shuttle comes on Wednesday. If your dates can bend to the timetable, the saving is yours.
Planning around the timetable
Work backwards from the day you need your things. Find your destination area's run day, then the Wednesday collection that feeds it, then the Monday noon cutoff before that. Book once you know your dates rather than waiting until everything is certain, because you can move to a later run through your manage link before the cutoff.
If your old tenancy ends and the new one has not started, read our guide to storage between moves. The hub holds goods between runs as part of every booking, and for longer gaps our storage service BoxSpeed takes over.