- This article discusses delivery couriers; for the font see Courier (font).
A courier is a person or company that delivers packages and mail, often between offices and generally in a shorter timescale than surface mail. In cities, some couriers will ride bicycles or motorbikes but most today use truck and aircraft. The term courier can also be used for courier robots that transport object in a building (home, industry, and others).
There are many courier enterprises. The world's largest courier company is UPS followed by FedEx.
History
Couriers of some kind have likely existed before first regular postal system has been invented. The first documented use of an organized courier service for the diffusion of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers for the diffusion of their decrees in the territory of the State (2400 BC). This practice almost certainly has roots in the much older practice of oral messaging and may have been built on a pre-existing infrastructure.
See also