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How to get your freight delivered on time

June 6, 2011 By

Imagine a day where you are not dealing with late delivery complaints.

For us that is every day.

boxes for Freight delivery

Sick of late freight?

As providers of courier services we know how tough it is to get your freight delivered on time. We are fortunate though – we have a process that we are going to share with you and if you follow these steps your freight will always reach it’s destination intact and when it should.  The day you cease to have customers calling about late deliveries is now a few steps closer.

1. When a customer wants a delivery double check their location details

Sometimes a customer calls from one location (that you have on your database) but they want their pallets delivered to a different destination. They don’t tell you but they do tell the warehouse. This means when you schedule the delivery their isn’t enough time for subsequent deliveries because you are routing to the wrong delivery address. A quick check at the booking stage can save your business hours.

2. Manage your clients delivery expectations from the outset

If your client calls at 8am and want their pallets in Birmingham at 10am that is not a problem providing you are also in Birmingham. However if you are in Edinburgh or London you will not be able to get the pallets to their destination in 3 hours. Not even documents using a motorbike could get delivered in that time frame. If you manage your clients expectations openly and honestly then you will have less phone calls hassling you.

3. When outsourcing to a courier service check that they have all the customer details…

… and that those details are correct. Email the courier the correct delivery addresses, phone numbers and details of service areas (especially if they haven’t delivered for you before). If there are issues parking at the delivery destination tell them now. The better prepared they are the more likely they are to be on time with your consignments.

4. Named contacts

Inform your courier service of the person ordering the job at collection and delivery points. If the job is a “special” or “screamer” then sometimes the general warehouse staff are not aware of it. Make the loading and unloading process faster by providing points of contact with phone numbers. A good courier company will ask for these at the time of booking.

5. Documentation

Most hold-ups at collection points involve the documents travelling with your freight. Call the warehouse and prepare them in advance for urgent collections and make the office staff aware of that days deliveries and who is collecting them. Without the correct documents a warehouse won’t release the freight and this will make the delivery late. A few minutes here can save you an hour and you avoid paying waiting time.

If you run through the 5 steps every time you outsource a delivery you will rarely have a problem getting your freight delivered on time.

Sarah

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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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Let’s talk about cancelling your delivery

December 20, 2010 By
Croquembouch wedding cake
Image via Wikipedia

The snow has made things hard for us same day couriers, we have to complete the same distances but use more fuel and more man hours to deliver things “as normal”.

We go above and beyond normal duty to see items get delivered. For example On Saturday we delivered a wedding cake to Birmingham from London. The booking was made a week ago and I left the house at 5am to reach London for 7am.

The wedding cake had to be delivered by 2pm to the venue. Our client confirmed this, and I left London at 7.10 am and drive up to Birmingham, through the snow, through the ice, through a blizzard.

Non stop, well sort of, at one point I travelled 20 miles at 11 miles per hour. The roads were treacherous and there were plenty of stay at home warnings and only travel if you have to warnings.

I reached Birmingham at 2.01 pm

I found a deserted venue.

No one was there to sign for the cake, the roads were clear and there were no cars in the car park.

I called my client, who called their client who promptly told them that they were glad they called as they rang 30 minutes ago to cancel the delivery as they had decided to cancel the wedding a few days ago…

Communication is the key to all deliveries. From getting the right vehicle, to the correctly trained driver to the correct delivery address, communication is the vital component to making a delivery success.

Cancelling a delivery isn’t always possible at short notice, you a still liable for it once the collection has taken place.

If you are on the receiving end of a delivery think carefully about how long it takes  for the item to reach you. You cannot cancel a delivery that is 6.5 hours into a 7 hour journey. Fuel and man hours still have to be paid.

You can cancel a delivery with notice, in the case this customer they knew a few days ago that the wedding wasn’t taking place. They should have informed everyone in the chain, including the delivery drivers.

As I pulled out of the venue car park, another van was pulling in. The driver wound down the window and we had a quick chat – he wanted to know where to go to get the disco gear signed for… another delivery not cancelled in time it seems.

It works out to be very expensive for everyone involved.

Remember when booking your deliveries to read the T&Cs

Kevin

Same day courier services

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A day in the life of your parcel

November 26, 2010 By

Each day we are lucky enough to gain new customers looking for dedicated courier services. They are customers that are sick to death of replacing items damaged or lost by the parcel system and when looking at alternatives that start to understand the value of a same day courier. In this blog post we thought we would explain a ‘typical day’ for the parcel itself. If you understand how the parcel is interacted with you can prepare for safer delivery.

The day in a life of a parcel

The item is wrapped and the courier is booked. (one pair of hands).

The parcel is collected and loaded into the delivery vehicle (one pair of hands, one potential drop). The driver may notice if you have labeled the package with instructions.

The parcel is in the van whilst other packages are collected and loaded in (potential damage in transit, possible damage from other packages).

The delivery van arrives at the depot and the van is unloaded (several pairs of hands, potential throws, potential drops and potential kick the parcel across the room).

The parcel are then sorted into cages by hand, or on a conveyor belt and then picked off by the sorting teams.

Each team collects the parcels for their area and they are thrown into the cages or vans. (More hands)

These vans then deliver to the local warehouses and they are again sorted local routes and the parcels encounter another set of hands. (A few more hands)

The packages are now delivered locally and it is at this point that the driver will definitely notice if there are labels saying “Fragile” or “this way up”. That may be a little too late for the fragile ornament you are sending aunt Agnes for Christmas.

As you can see from the breakdown of the parcels ‘day’ many people touch and interact with the parcel.

The delivery system has to be as fast as possible and that may be it’s faster to throw a small box than walk it across the room. The sorters are under a lot of pressure and many are conscientious workers. As in all jobs you will find there are people who take short cuts, and there is nothing we can do about them, it’s down to the delivery company to pay proper rates to their workers and to value them.

What can you do to prevent parcel breakages?

Package with care.

  • Strong outer boxes
  • Polystyrene chips (or similar) to absorb impact
  • Tape the seams of the box with parcel tape

Understand the way that the parcel travels and you can factor in the packaging to make it stronger and more robust.  A robust package is more likely to arrive intact. If you find you are spending so much money on packaging that it’s no longer cost effective to deliver then have a look at hiring a same day courier for the day. Less hands, more efficient delivery.

Sarah
PS if you need packing advice, have a search around the blog, we share lots of advice.

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