A stationery shop moving from one premises to another about nine hundred metres away, with roughly four hundred cartons and no wish to close for a day.
Priced per drop this would have been a very large invoice and an absurd way to do it. We quoted it hourly instead: the pickup and two men for four evenings after closing, at 650 an hour with a two hour minimum, which came to about a third of what per drop pricing would have produced.
We suggested that ourselves. It is worth saying plainly because the alternative was more profitable for us and the shop would not have known.
The constraint was the new premises being down a lane a pickup cannot enter, so everything was carried the last thirty metres by hand cart. That is what decided the number of hours, not the distance, and we measured it on the first evening and then told the shop honestly that it would take four evenings rather than the three we had estimated.
Four evenings, two men, and the shop opened in the new place on the fifth morning.