Blog

It’s not that long ago when we were using handwritten dockets and checklists to schedule our workload. I remember back in the 1990s writing out delivery instructions for the daily influx of parcels that passed through our depot.

The phone would be ringing off the hook with customers wishing to place orders or requesting PODs, and life in the office was generally mayhem! Organised mayhem of course!

As mobile phones were very expensive still, we used in cab radios, difficult to hear due to interference, and less convenient for the drivers to use.

Things have moved on a lot since then and a lot of the arduous manual tasks are a thing of the past. Thank goodness! I wonder now how we coped and managed to get every parcel delivered each day.

What’s amazing is how much technology has helped our sector over the last couple of decades. Now we receive orders not by telephone but by email, we produce multiple labels via computer and track parcels by a barcode for added security. And our drivers are all equipped with mobile phones, so we can communicate with them more safely and reliably.

Our vehicles have trackers and sat nav, so we know where they are going, how long the journey is taking and when a parcel will be delivered. It means we have less need to contact our drivers and our customers receive a much better service as we can keep them informed of progress when their goods are in our care.

Tracking allows us to be more efficient in our planning and use of resources too, as we can find the nearest available vehicle to a collection.

Sat nav has reduced delivery times allowing any driver the advantage of finding their destination no matter where they are - you may have noticed that less people nowadays are asking for directions! And drivers can seek alternative routes easily when traffic incidents cause hold-ups. Sat navs can even provide us with ETA’s on request, all great for managing expectations and meeting important deadlines.

Technology has even helped improve vehicle engine management making them more powerful and more efficient.

And let’s not forget the less burdensome admin – orders and invoices are now processed via speclialist courier software, and invoices emailed instead of being printed and mailed.

Why all this nostalgia you might ask? Well it just so happens that our 20 year anniversary is fast approaching – 8th February 2016 is the day we will be celebrating our time in the courier business. It’s been a long and at times challenging road (pardon the pun) but we’ve enjoyed it, and would like to say thanks to the technology, our business is now more efficient, more reliable and safer for our drivers. And of course all our customers’ consignments are in better care with us now than they have ever been!