Travel around the motorway network late at night, and chances are you won’t see too many trucks driving around. The ones you are likely to see, though, are tall sided and will be part of the UK’s overnight delivery pallet shipping networks.
One of the benefits of living on a crowded island is that most of the country can be reached easily by road, within a day. Consumers have long been led to expect that a letter posted in one part of the UK can be sent by first class mail, with the expectation it will arrive the next day at its destination. And nowadays, the trucking equivalent of first class mail is the overnight delivery service.
There are several competing overnight delivery pallet services, all based on shipping goods of almost any sort, so long as they are strapped to a pallet. And they broadly work on similar lines, often using a network of smaller independent transport companies around the country, who work together to deliver a seamless service.
The pallet networks tend to have regional depots, which deliver pallets out to customers, and collect goods for overnight shipping during the afternoon. Once the collected goods are all back at the depot, they are then place in large, tall sided trucks for shipping to hub warehouses – it is these that can be seen running along the motorways, once the evening rush hour traffic has died down.
At the warehouse hub, the large trucks are unloaded, and the pallets are sorted by an army of fork lift trucks moving at fast speeds. Once sorted, the pallets are then reloaded on different trucks, and sent on towards the depot nearest their destination. An early morning crew will then prepare the pallets they receive at the depot, splitting the load for local deliveries on smaller lorries, generally with a lifting tailgate.
The efficiency of the operations means shipping costs are competitive, and the service is generally very reliable for those who are able to pack goods in the right way, and for whom a next day service is appropriate.
However, there are limits to the system’s ability to handle certain types of goods, so it is well worth asking Smart Directions, your logistics professional to advise on whether a pallet network is a suitable way to ship your consignments. Unloading, for example, may only be to the roadside – something that is no good if your customer has a small shop unit on a busy street. Consumers who might expect products to be carried into their home, and unwrapped, will be disappointed. And naturally there are weight and size limits.
So now you know – next time you see a tall, curtain-sided truck ploughing through the night on a motorway drive, it will be full of pallets intended to reach their destinations the next morning.
Give us a call today on 01442 507240 to discuss your Hertfordshire and UK overnight delivery requirements or contact us here. You might even want to get an online quote too.