Selling Your Spare Luggage Kilos: How to Do It Safely
Selling the free kilos in your suitcase is a long-standing practice between Europe and Africa. Between Paris and Dakar, the couriers known as "GP" advertise around €10 to €13 per kilo in 2026, and many travelers do the same on a smaller scale, by word of mouth or in WhatsApp groups. It is a good way to make a ticket pay for itself, as long as you avoid the traps of informal selling.
How selling kilos works
The idea is simple: you announce your route, your date and how many kilos you have, and senders hand you parcels for a price per kilo. On arrival, a relative of the sender picks up the parcel. The system works because sending through a courier costs far more and takes longer on these routes.
On the big diaspora routes, such as Paris-Dakar, Paris-Abidjan, Paris-Douala, Brussels-Kinshasa or Marseille-Algiers, it is common practice. Prices vary with the season: they rise before the holidays and in summer, when everyone sends at the same time.
The risks of informal selling
The main risk falls on you: in a WhatsApp group, you are often handed a sealed package from someone you do not know. Yet you are the one answering for it at customs. A parcel containing a banned product, medicines or goods that must be declared can cost you far more than it earned you.
The other risk is the lack of any record: no written description, no reviews, nothing to rely on if there is a disagreement over the contents, the payment or the handover. It is your word against theirs.
Setting your price
For a parcel paid by weight, start from the going rate on your route: around €10 to €13 per kilo between Paris and Dakar in 2026, for example. A fragile, bulky or valuable item is better priced per unit than per kilo, because it commits you more.
For a product you buy yourself, think in percentage of the price: on Colia, never less than 10%, and never less than €5 per item, whatever it is.
Selling your kilos on Colia
A clear listing
Your route, dates and available space, visible to people waiting to send something on that route.
Contents described before the deal
Every request describes the item, and you discuss it in the chat before accepting anything.
A check at the handover
Item in hand before you take it: if it does not match or stays sealed, you refuse the handover.
Reviews after every delivery
They protect both sides and build trust, and with it, your prices.
The rules that are not negotiable
Never a sealed package, never medicines for someone else, never anything the airline bans from the hold, such as spare batteries. Stick to your ticket's weight limits too: excess baggage paid at the airport can wipe out your whole gain.
Above the traveler allowance, or as soon as the goods are not yours, use the goods-to-declare channel. And depending on where you live, this income may be taxable.
Check what you may put in a suitcase, item by item
Useful? Pass it on.
Your free kilos are worth something
Post your trip on Colia and sell your space to people whose request you can read first.