Can You Make Money in the Delivery Industry?

Working for ZTO, YTO, STO, or J&T isn't especially lucrative. A base courier salary plus a delivery fee of ¥0.5–1 per parcel is typical, and a single negative review can trigger a fine starting at ¥50. Monthly earnings generally land between ¥5,000 and ¥8,000—and if fines pile up, some couriers end up making less than ¥5,000. As for franchise operations, the delivery fee allocated by headquarters is ¥1–2 per parcel, of which only ¥0.5–1.2 goes to the actual courier; the real profit comes from pickups, where each parcel yields roughly ¥4–6.

Looking at the economics broadly: with a base shipping rate of ¥6, the sender earns about ¥4 and the delivery fee about ¥1.5, leaving only a few cents for freight costs after the parent company takes its cut. Gross margins are thin, so volume is everything. For example, STO handled an average of 8 billion parcels annually while netting just ¥300 million in profit.

Investigation into the Livelihoods of Million Delivery Workers in the "Tongda" Express Network