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5 Steps for Preparing Your Boat for Transport

April 11, 2011 By

With the rise in internet sales for items such as boats and jet skis, boat transport has become more commonplace in recent years. Often, the people who buy boats online live out of state or even out of the country, which means the vessel must be transported to its destination.

Selling your boat online to someone that wants it shipped to him or her can seem like a daunting task. How do you prepare a boat for transport?

In case you have found yourself in such a predicament, here are some tips to help you get started. Read these 5 steps for preparing your boat for transport:

1. Remove or stow all gear and secure it in place. If there is a cabin or storage compartment, lock or secure the door. All electronics, horns, antennas, anchors, propellers, flag masts, lights, anchor lights, outriggers, wheels, masts, windshields that protrude, etc., must be removed, packed securely and securely stored. Also, disconnect the battery and secure it in place.
2. Drain all fluids from the boat or jet ski, such as fuel from the fuel tank or water from the bilge, air conditioner, or water pumps.
3. Tie or tape hatches or cabin windows down from the outside. If there is a leak, seal it so that rainwater does not leak in during transit.
4. Remove the canvas cover so that it does not rip or tear during shipping.
5. Double-check that nothing that can be removed is protruding from the boat. The boat will normally be shrink-wrapped by the transport company for added protection, and protrusions can cause the shrink-wrap to tear.

Heather

Heather Thomas lives and works as a small business owner in Destin, Florida with her husband and 3 children. She writes about all aspects of her Destin boat rental company, from boating to social media to shipping :)

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“But I can drive it there myself, cheaper…”

March 28, 2011 By

Is something we often hear as same day couriers, from frustrated customers who don’t really understand the value of their own time.

For example last week we were asked to quote to deliver a passport to Bristol, urgently required for identification purposes. If the recipient failed to have sufficient identification ie the passport then they couldn’t attend an exam. Failing to attend the exam would mean no pay rise and the extra £5k a year the pass would bring was needed by the family.

So the exam attendee asked their partner to get the passport couriered down to them.

We were one of the courier companies asked to provide a quote which we did, only to get the exasperated response “But I can drive it there myself, cheaper” and the obvious answer is, yes you can but what are you not doing with that time, that you should be?

Remember what it costs you to fill up as an ordinary motorist? A commercial vehicle takes more fuel, it costs more. Then we have insurance. Sure you can send your wife/partner/personal assistant on a delivery but what happens if they have an accident? First off are they even covered by the insurance that you have? What happens if you are prosecuted for corporate manslaughter if you don’t have the right insurances?

There is more to delivery than just getting in a car or van and driving, and if as a customer you don’t understand that then you will always be thinking ”But I can drive it there myself, cheaper…”.

Start valuing your own time at the correct rate, if you can afford to take 7 hours off to drive to Bristol and back in a day and nothing gets neglected then go for it, if not; call us.

Kevin

FAQs about courier services

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Filed Under: Courier Business, Courier Services

Same day courier via QR code

March 23, 2011 By

Ever since Sarah was asked to write a guest post about these back in January, she has been fascinated by the concept. Your data is held in a bar code like image.

Here’s ours
qrcode

It says what we do and has our phone number next to it.

Now to start adding them to the vans… it’s certainly a novel way of advertising our details!

Kevin

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Filed Under: Courier Business, Courier Services

Making time for your delivery

March 7, 2011 By

Often a delivery takes seconds, the item is handed to the customer and then they sign and it’s completed from the customers point of view.

From our customers side of things, they are still waiting delivery confirmation so when the courier returns to their vehicle they then phone that through, and the job is almost complete for them.

For the courier, the job is not complete, they have the next delivery to do as well and each one takes a varying amount of time from seconds to hours.

Yes, hours…

Sometimes customers are unable to take a delivery at a scheduled time -

  • They may have no space in their warehouse
  • They may have staff out at lunch
  • They may need a forklift to unload

It’s important that you let the company you book your courier service through know there may be delays and they can take that into account when they do their schedules. Delays that can’t be built in often occur waiting time which makes the delivery more expensive.

Think about making time for your delivery before you ring through the booking, you can save yourself some money and some hassle.

Sarah

 

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Trouble shooting parcel couriers

February 21, 2011 By

Parcel Couriers can have a terrible reputation and today we find some of it is justified.

For our regular customers we use a third party parcel carrier to deliver the odd parcel that they have. This is a win/win for all of us as we get to look after all the delivery aspects, the customer gets a good price and the parcel carrier still gets the job.

If it goes wrong, the customer let’s us know and we chase the parcel carrier to see what the problem is and resolve it.

The first thing we have to do is find out where the parcel is, easy you may think but the parcel system is not set up to be easy; it’s set up to be fast – see a day in the life of a parcel.

We need to establish where in the “system” the parcel is, on Friday this took us 5 hours and we still didn’t get to find the parcel in question. This morning we did locate the parcel and it is on a van awaiting delivery.

When we asked the parcel delivery company why they didn’t locate the package sooner or deliver it (they sat on it for a week) their response left us speechless.

They said it was undelivered as they didn’t have a driver.

That’s our problem as we thought they were professional. They had lost our business once before and worked hard to get us back, now they have blown it again. Needless to say we are furious, our customer is unhappy but the parcel company is happy. In their small print they have the statistic that 90% of parcels are delivered the next day. They are still getting paid even though their abysmal service has cost everyone else in the chain.

90%? Great! But what happens when your parcel is one of the 10% not delivered?

If our parcel was still in the depot we would send one of our Nottingham based drivers to collect it then complete the delivery. We would make a substantial loss on that package that we could not recover from the customer or the parcel company. It doesn’t sit with our green company culture to do this, but we can honestly say that we did our best.

For your the customer, the one who deals directly with the parcel company life is tougher. It’s you who is losing hours on the phone chasing and tracking your package. It’s your business hours wasted which are billed out at a higher rate than what your package costs to send.

1 x package for national delivery = £12 +VAT

5 x £10 per hour for admin member to chase the problem = £50 + taxes and NI costs

Total = £62 + to send a parcel by a parcel company.

That’s an expensive parcel delivery whichever way you look at it.

For our parcel carrier their slapdash attitude has cost them our few thousand parcels per year, we have sourced a new provider that has a better grasp of customer service and promises 99% of parcels delivered. They cost a bit more than £12 a carton but they will be saving us £62 in wasted time.

Sarah

Types of courier services

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