Talk about one man’s problem being another man’s opportunity. As unhappy Royal Mail workers become submerged in a backlog of post caused by two days of strikes last week, Oxfordshire couriers are cashing in.

Among them is man with a van Steve Fox, who gave up his full-time job in June to become a self-employed franchisee courier — and has now found himself run off his wheels, as it were.

He said: “A fortnight ago business tripled and now it’s shooting up again. People wanting parcels delivered are on to me from first thing in the morning, thanks to the trouble at Royal Mail.

“Now I am already toying with the idea of employing someone else.”

Mr Fox, 50, hit lucky with the timing of buying his franchise from FastWay, a company that claims to offer both the advantages of a local firm and at the same time the muscle to deliver anywhere fast.

Courier organisations large and small are taking up the slack as Royal Mail flounders — but at a higher cost to businesses using their services which, of course, they will eventually have to pass on to their customers or face a squeeze on revenue.

Mr Fox added: “I worked as a lorry driver for an agency until June, having been made redundant three times before that. Then I became self-employed and I haven’t looked back since.”

Over at the Milton Park branch of courier giant TNT Express, spokesman Nick Murray had much the same tale to tell.

He said: “We are at least ten per cent up and one day last week, in the run-up to the strikes, we were up 16 per cent on business-to-business deliveries of goods.”

But he added that TNT Post, which accepts and sorts bulk mail for businesses, had been hit because Royal Mail was required to take such letters ‘the final mile’ from sorting office to addressee’s door.

TNT agrees charges with large customers, such as utility companies or banks, and those charges often undercut the one-price-fits-all cost of an ordinary stamp, though on the so-called level playing field question Mr Murray pointed out that courier companies pay VAT, while Royal Mail does not.

Margaret Coles, chairman elect of the Oxfordshire branch of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: “Our members have tried to shift to other companies. They’ve found them expensive and actually a number of them have been turned away because the other service providers can’t meet the demand.”

Now Oxfordshire businesses that make much of their money over the run-up to Christmas are becoming worried that more strikes might cause further disruption.

Karen Stevens, accounts manager at printing firm Parchment, in Cowley, said: “We already go and collect our post from the depot in the morning as it would otherwise take until lunchtime for it to be delivered.

“If this lasts until Christmas, the impact could be huge.”

And Katie May, who runs skincare and cosmetics company Yin Yang Natural Sciences, based at Fulbrook, near Burford, said: “The Christmas period is a big part of the business and we cannot afford to be let down.”

She added that her business had used Royal Mail since 1973 but that the strike had forced her to use a courier company instead.

She said: “We can’t continue a business that relies on small parcels without making other arrangements. It means paying more in some instances, but it has to be worth it to maintain our service.”

Ms May sends out about 1,000 newsletters a month and will now encourage customers to use email instead.

And there, of course, is the rub. Apart from fighting increased competition from rivals such as TNT Express and FastWay for the lucrative parcel delivery business, Royal Mail is facing a drop in letters too, thanks to competition from email.

Paul Garraway, branch secretary of the Oxfordshire Communications Union (CWU), said that about 95 per cent of the county’s 1,000 postal workers in 15 offices — including Ledgers Close in East Oxford, Abingdon, Bicester, Banbury, and Chipping Norton — had gone out during last week’s strike.

Postal workers in Oxford said that the strike was necessary because Royal Mail had not honoured the 2007 pay and modernerisation agreement that was signed at the end of the last national strike.

But how can businesses cope with the extra costs of using couriers instead of Royal Mail?

Lianne Fisher, owner of allthingsgifts.co.uk, based in Chalgrove, said. “We are using UKmail and DHL instead of Royal Mail, but it costs between £4 and £5 a time compared to about £1.60. We can’t absorb all that and so we are passing the costs, or at least some of them, on to customers.”

She added: “I feel that the strikes have put people off even looking online for gifts, as they probably fear they will never arrive. But, like us, a lot of sellers big and small are trying to offer a courier service instead of Royal Mail.”

So, to return to the future, will businesses ever go back to Royal Mail?

Caroline Taylor, of baby clothes wholesaler Merry-Go-Round, based in Adderbury, said: “We have changed all deliveries of our current orders to couriers.

“We will continue with this method until there is no chance of our orders being delayed and will not return all our business to Royal Mail even when the situation is resolved.”

Royal Mail managers are acutely aware of the dissatisfaction of customers who, they insist, should come ahead of the union’s determination to strike.

A spokesman said: “Every one per cent of lost business is costing Royal Mail some £70m of lost business a year. It remains hugely disappointing that the union seems to be in denial about the impact of competition, especially from email and the Internet, which has helped drive mail volumes down by ten per cent this year.”