An Easy Day for the Courier

It’s Monday morning and everything seems to be running more smoothly than usual. The winter chill is definitely here, but the sun is shining and that makes everything seem a bit brighter. It’s 11 o’clock and the driver has already finished the deliveries that typically take him until lunchtime. He checks the time and decides to stop for coffee, since he’s ahead of schedule and this doesn’t happen very often. Melbourne city is known for its restaurants, cafes and range of quality cuisine inspired from all parts of the world, so it’s not difficult to find a nice café.

Quieter Roads During School Holidays

He sits down, opens the newspaper and browses through to see if there is any news that may interest him. He happens to notice an advertisement for a holiday program and then it finally dawns on him – it’s school holidays. 3.8 million students don’t all have to get to school by 9 o’clock. No wonder the roads were quiet this morning.

But it’s not only the school kids that take so much traffic off the roads. Many parents of school aged children take time off work to care for their children during these periods, meaning even few cars are on the roads. As such, the morning and afternoon runs for the courier which are usually characterised by stopping and starting, horns blaring and long red lights are strangely quiet and smooth. On the down side, the traffic in the middle of the day often increases as parents take their kids out to shopping malls and other places of interest, so the courier had better not stop for too long.

Same Day Pallet Delivery

Extra consignments during the course of the day are not unheard of and the level of disruption they cause varies depending on the magnitude of the delivery and where it has to be picked up and dropped off in relation to the courier’s location and schedule. One extra parcel to be delivered in the vicinity of the warehouse isn’t likely to throw the whole day out. A whole pallet of goods to delivered at the opposite side of town will.

Had the driver known about the delivery the day before, he could have packed the goods, incorporated the consignment strategically into his schedule and saved a lot of time by doing so. That would have been a relatively cheap pallet delivery. Now he will have to drop everything and do the pallet pickup and delivery in the middle of his run. As such, it’s not surprising that an urgent same day pallet delivery costs a fair bit more than a standard delivery.

Working Strategically and Finishing on Time

Most drivers plan their own routes and have a regular daily or weekly schedule. It is up to them to figure out the most efficient way of delivering the goods if they want to finish on time. Others have different routes each day, and these drivers are generally told to go to a delivery location at a particular time, and it is up to them to find a way there. Regardless of the way couriers operate, it helps to have a thorough understanding of an area’s street grid and know which roads permit truck access and which ones do not.