Parcels to Pallets: Palletways UK's network growth and latest trend

By?Warwick Trimble, Palletways UK Network Director.

The UK saw a big jump in e-commerce retail, both B2C and B2B, during the pandemic as stores and businesses temporarily closed and consumers remained hesitant to physically shop in person even once they reopened. In our own neighbourhoods, we’ve all seen the growing dominance and visibility of the world's largest online retailer and other parcel delivery companies on an almost daily basis which reflects this change.?Today consumers’ demands remain the same in terms of availability of goods and delivery options.

With the resulting growth in parcel companies, we’ve seen an increasing trend in our UK business towards parcel companies diversifying into haulage and palletised freight. Given they’re both multi-drop with many other similarities and transferrable skills, it’s a natural progression perhaps to move into heavy goods vehicles. In the past three months alone Palletways UK has seen more and more firms joining that don’t come from a traditional transport background, including Darcica Logistics in Bicester, Prime Parcel Services (PPS) in Glasgow and Collect2Deliver in Kirkcaldy.

This has many benefits to us as a traditional express palletised freight network, as well as to these smaller companies, as Anthony Tattersall, owner of Darcica Logistics explains: “Trucks are my passion and initially parcels were an opportunity to start my own business, but I always knew I wanted to grow and expand into bigger things and develop a successful, sustainable business across all areas of logistics.”

Anthony adds:

It’s not a monumental jump to transition as we’re already skilled at routing, managing drivers, vehicle repairs and maintenance. We’re used to maintaining high levels of customer service to ensure jobs are completed on time and to a high standard, which involves problem-solving, quick thinking and project management. The difference is having and maintaining your own customer database as opposed to sub-contract work, and a more dynamic and interesting structure of work – managing a whole team not just drivers.

“The main challenge in moving from parcels to pallets is the finance needed for investment in larger vehicles and premises, but on the plus side you gain more commitment through longer contracts, longevity and security within the pallet network to balance out the risk.”

Jeff Lawson at Collect2Deliver agrees, saying:

Fundamentally the principal of transporting goods is the same across the logistics industry. The difference is the service provision particularly at the last mile delivery point. The devil is in the detail – in planning and delivering – which is key in providing a great service. We’ve found the tools we use were very similar to Palletways. Even though the product and the end service was different, it’s been easy to integrate into their IT platform. This may not be such an easy task for a ‘traditional’ transport company. Customer service, the focus of Palletways, is about providing a successful last mile service through innovation and this echoes our company ethos too.

He continues...

Read the full story here, on www.palletways.com