Delivering The Goods

From standard business mail to bulk freight, businesses are distributing items every day, adding costs to the bottom line - Rebecca Spicer explores distribution options and how to develop a cost-effective strategy to meet individual needs

 
Whether you’re sending letters, confidential documents, products or supplies, most businesses have some kind of distribution needs. You may be sending something as a one-off, you may be sending bulk mail, or a variety of products to a variety of customers, or high volume freight interstate. And you might have specialised needs, such as highly fragile freight, bulky items, or goods requiring refrigerated transport and storage.

In any case, you’re most likely not going to deliver the items yourself, so you will need to choose a delivery mode—mail, road, rail or sea freight—as well as choosing a service provider.

But with so many carriers out there for all these modes, it’s important that a business owner or manager does research to ascertain the best solution for their business—at the best price and for the best level of service. Alternatively, a logistics consultant can guide your decision-making, or even take over the whole process for you.

If you’re sending smaller, non-fragile packages, then sending them by post is the obvious solution. Australia Post offers a range of businesses solutions, especially in terms of bulk mail and Express Post options. Also, for businesses sending more than 20 business parcels per week, Australia Post has a range of contract parcel services, such as reduced rates and scheduled pick-ups, eParcel, after-hours delivery and receipted delivery.

An alternative to the Post, particularly for confidential documents, is DX Mail (www.dxmail.com.au), where members transfer documents to each other through a network of strategically placed document exchanges around Australia. Members pay an annual fee, which allows them to use the priority overnight service to transfer documents to other DX members.

But if you’ve got larger, awkward, fragile or high volume freight that needs to be delivered in a more timely fashion, you’re more likely to engage the services of a courier or freight company, and this is where your options really start to open up.

Scott Carson, director of logistics consultancy Carson Business Logistics, suggests when weighing up the best mode of transport for your goods, you’ll first need to ascertain how urgently the freight needs to arrive at its destination. "So work out the end-to-end freight need and, from there, work out whether it may be able to go by air, road, or rail freight. Within those options, many carriers will also offer an express or general service."

Businesses can also choose to use a distribution centre to handle the delivery of freight, or make their own arrangements for delivery to customers. An option for very small businesses is to use the likes of Pack & Send’s 80 retail stores around Australia as mini distribution centres, or as drop-off and pick-up points.

Doing a simple internet search for a transport, freight, or courier company will deliver innumerable results. Ivan Backman, chairman of the Australian Logistics Council (ALC), says to narrow down your search, determine what your freight task is and what you want out of it. So spell out what is to be delivered, how, by what time, any special requirements and so on, and search for carriers based on those criteria.

Your freight task could vary each time you need to send something, so you may need to engage a few different carriers that specialise in your particular needs, or look for a carrier with a wide range of capabilities.