You keep the warehouse. We take it from the loading door.
For businesses despatching parcels in volume who already pick and pack their own orders. You do not want us running your stock — you want the boxes off your bench, on time, every day, without anyone re-typing an address.
One despatch day, two sets of hands
The most useful thing we can tell you before you book is exactly where our responsibility starts. Everything left of the dotted line stays yours. Everything right of it becomes ours, including explaining it to your customer when it goes wrong.
Up to the loading door
- Orders closeWhatever your own cut-off is. We work to it rather than imposing ours.
- Pick and packYour people, your packaging, your quality standard.
- LabelsPrinted from your system, using a connection we set up so nobody types an address twice.
- ManifestOne list of everything going today, generated rather than counted by hand.
From the door onward
- CollectionScheduled, at a time agreed with you rather than whenever a van is passing.
- Sort and line-haulInto the network, sorted overnight, out again the next morning.
- DeliveryTo your customer, with the options that stop a round coming back full.
- Returns and exceptionsFailed deliveries, refusals and returns handled and reported back to you.
Four ways parcels leave your building
Most retailers end up using two — a standing daily collection for the bulk of it, and one of the others for the days that do not behave.
Scheduled daily collection
A standing slot, every working day, agreed against your own packing cut-off. The right default once volume is predictable, because your team can plan the afternoon around it.
On-demand collection
Booked when you need it. Useful before you have a rhythm, and for the days when a large order lands after the standing collection has gone.
Multiple collections a day
Where a single afternoon collection means half a day's orders wait until tomorrow. Two slots frequently buy a whole extra day of service at very little extra cost.
Drop-off
You bring them to us. Cheapest of the four and genuinely sensible at low volume or where you are close by — we will say so rather than selling you a collection you do not need.
Five things that move a parcel rate
Volume is the one everybody leads with, and it is not the one with the most room in it. Three of the five below are things you control from the packing bench.
A steady two hundred a day is easier to resource than a lumpy thousand a week, and it prices better. Predictability is worth more to us than raw numbers, which is why smaller retailers sometimes beat larger ones.
Parcels are priced on whichever is greater, weight or the space they occupy. A carton two sizes too big is paid for on every single order. Reviewing your packaging range is frequently the largest saving available and costs nothing.
Bad addresses cause failed deliveries, and failed deliveries cost far more than the original carriage. Validating addresses at checkout removes a cost most retailers never attribute correctly.
Dense urban delivery is cheaper per parcel than scattered rural. Your destination mix is largely fixed, but it explains why a headline rate from another retailer does not transfer to you.
Offering one fast option and one economy option, rather than making everything fast, moves a surprising share of orders onto the cheaper service without anybody complaining.
The conversation to have in August, not November
Every retailer knows peak is coming and most talk to their carrier once it has started. Capacity across the industry is planned months ahead, and the retailers who get looked after in December are the ones who forecast in the summer.
Tell us your shape early
Not just the total. Which weeks spike, how sharply, and what your worst single day looks like. A forecast you revise is far more useful than one you never give.
Extra collections beat extra hours
Adding a second daily slot through peak usually costs less than paying your own team to pack later, and it stops the whole day's orders resting on one van.
Plan the returns wave too
It arrives after the peak, when everyone has stopped paying attention, and for many retailers it is the larger operational problem of the two.
Send a month of despatch data.
Parcel count, box sizes, destination spread and your return rate. That is enough to price your profile properly — and to tell you which of the five drivers above is costing you the most, which is usually not the one you expected.
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