Hi - We are setting up a dropship ecommerce site for large and small items such as furniture, homewares etc. Has anyone got any recommendations for 2 man large item pick up + delivery services? National deliveries but not NI / Eire. I've spoken to several of the large delivery companies and they are looking for a minimum of 30 orders per week. Obviously as a new business we don't have a clear number of orders - so can't guarantee these number of orders at the moment. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance, Adrian
I don't know them myself buy a guy I do some work for uses Swiftcare in Banbury - https://www.swiftcareuk.com/ He's used them for 15 years delivering, unpacking and setting up appliances
I’d rather sit naked on broken glass than use XDP again. If they loose an item (which they often do) they charge you to send a replacement. If that item happens to show up somewhere (which they often don’t) they charge you to return it back to you. And in 100’s of call attempts, I NEVER got anyone to answer the customer service number.
These people are the best I come across in the UK - they even build flat-pack furniture and can get the customer to call HQ to verify delivery and they do the entire UK. Panasonic Broadcast use them for their high-value items. https://www.bjshomedelivery.com/services/flexible-delivery/
Oh here we go again Your my favourite vap person but you get you what you pay for ! If your shipping on a larger scale you are always challenged by your delivery budget and when moving things at these volumes you will always have damage .losses ,mis routes and other shananigans . You may even have to employ a full time person to chase and deal if your shipping enough
I have some knowledge in this area. We ship large items (circa 180cm x 90cm) in decent numbers. The difference is that our products are relatively thin (6cm) and light (12kg). We currently use TNT and overall I am extremely happy with their rates and ability to handle the volume we shift. We did use Panther for a while. I cannot speak badly enough of them. They almost destroyed our business due to an incredible list of failures. Because of experiences with them we moved away from the other operators in that area such as XDP, Tuffnells etc. Your best bet might well be to use Anyvan in the short term while you get a clearer idea of volumes.
Are suggesting that establish companies on this site use a Dutch auction every time they dispatch an item to a valuable customer. With no phone back or person to contact You started this thread explaining you have some knowledge
Firstly I didn't start this threat. My company regularly ships bulky items (125 orders this month comprising approx 600 oversize items of various sizes). Not a massive amount I will grant you but we have gone through various options including Anyvan, Panther, an amalgamation site for couriers as well as TNT. As they are unaware of order volumes, and shipping using conventional carriers is going to be expensive, then it's not unreasonable to suggest using a service like Anyvan in the short term to fulfil orders while they get a handle on volumes / costs depending on the supplier they eventually choose to use. You get contact details of the driver and of course you can enter the details of the client. I would steer *anyone* away from Panther based on my experiences and from speaking to other people shipping similar sized items they have had issues with XPD and Tuffnells. I know that breakages can occur, and we have changed our packaging to minimise this, but the rate with Panther was crazy - and that is not even considering the deliveries not attempted, the misroutings etc, and that was when our volume was a quarter of what it is now. They were also more expensive than TNT. I would recommend TNT. We still sometimes use an Anyvan service if the item(s) are particularly bulky but we're now at the stage where we're sending enough product to get decent rates with TNT. Shipping oversize items in the UK is far more affordable than in the US - which is why we're not currently moving into that market. The oversize fee is $80 pretty much regardless of who you use!
The company I now work for manufacture and sell whiteboards, glass writing surfaces etc. Custom sizes of anywhere between 1m long - 4m long x 1.2m/1.5m high x 6cm-ish thick. They were using Tuffnells for many, many years with plenty of damages so product had to be re-made which meant that extra expense and delays for the end customer and delays on payment to us from customer. Have gone to use TNT for the past 6 months and it has been an improvement, but tend to use local same day van couriers. Deliveries all over the country from Falmouth to Newcastle to Kent. At least we know it will get there 99% safe failing a catastrophe.
We use EUB in China. If the package weight is blow 2KG, the price is would be great. For example: 500g, 500*0.08+10=50RMB=50/6.7=7.5USD