Craig Pitchers, the CEO of The Courier Guy, started his logistics career in the army. He helped manage South Africa’s military withdrawal from what was then South West Africa, now Namibia, MyBroadband reported.
Pitchers has more than 30 years of logistics experience. He now leads The Courier Guy, which MyBroadband described as South Africa’s most popular courier delivery company.
He grew up in Johannesburg and went to primary school in Mondeor, in the south of the city. He finished grade 7 in 1982.
He then attended Marist Brothers High School, a Catholic school in Linmeyer in Johannesburg South.
In 1987, straight after high school, Pitchers joined D-Log. This was the logistics arm of the South African Defence Force (SADF), once known as the Directorate of Logistics.
Under the apartheid government, young white men were called up for two years of army service. Those who refused faced six years in prison and a criminal record.
D-Log handled supply chains, equipment distribution, maintenance and depot storage across military zones. Pitchers served during the later years of the South African Border War, which officially ran from August 1966 to March 1990.
In 1989, South Africa carried out a large withdrawal of its forces and military supplies from Namibia and Angola.
According to his official biography, Pitchers managed “the demobilisation of border units in what was then South West Africa: everything from personal letters to foot-lockers.”
He also moved equipment “from the Angolan border to a consolidation facility in Brits for redistribution, repurposing or decommissioning,” the biography said.
After the army, Pitchers spent 23 years at UTi Worldwide in Centurion, Gauteng. He worked there from 1993 to 2016.
During that time he earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Cape Town. In 2013 he also completed the Global Executive Development Programme at the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
In 2016, Pitchers moved to Dawn Wing, an express courier company that is part of DPD Laser Express Logistics. He became commercial executive at DPD in June 2020, as online shopping grew quickly in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He joined The Courier Guy as chief operating officer in October 2021. At the time, the company was still run by its founder, Stephen Gleisner.
Gleisner sold The Courier Guy to private holding company Adenia Partners in 2024. The price was not made public. The company had an annual turnover of R1.85 billion at the time of the sale.
Pitchers was promoted to CEO after the sale and Gleisner’s departure, and he has held the role since then.
According to MyBroadband, his focus is on growing the company’s coverage. This includes its parcel lockers, pickup points and last-mile delivery services.
Source: this article is based on reporting by MyBroadband. Image: MyBroadband. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice Business desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Anelisa Nkuna covers business and money news for Tzaneen Voice. Anelisa reports on the rand, fuel prices, interest rates, jobs, Eskom, Transnet, farming and company results. The aim is simple: explain what the numbers mean for household budgets, small businesses and workers in South Africa.