Originally Posted by
Bigglesthefrog
MM.
Many years ago I worked as a motorcycle courier and in fact jointly ran the outfit for a while.
I know nothing about the courier business, but would be surprised to find it is totally unregulated (i.e. anyone with a bike can just punt for business with no permits, licences, approvals required - other than a basic motorcycle licence )
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Your safety example of delivering a parcel is interesting. Clearly carying a small, stable, non-time critical parcel on a good VFR day from one locality within a country to another has no safety risk relative to a purely recreatioal flight. However, this is only a small stretch from flying a friend - you can't make a business out it.
The law is to prevent people form offering a more general service (eg. I will fly your parcel to a schedule) where the pressures of less than ideal weather, timing, airport environments, cargo packaging/type and all of the other issues that come from offering a service to the public at large come into play.