How to go about choosing delivery companies?

[unstoppable]

Morning all,

I need to find some delivery companies which I can use for my new B2B business to deliver customer orders nationally. The orders will be of all sizes ranging from a couple of cartons to a pallet to a few pallets. My products are small but heavy. How do I go out finding good reliable delivery companies?

Thanks.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

For B2B DPD and Hermes might work well. I wouldn't use them for B2C. Most shipping companies require you to set up an account with min. quantities to ship per year. I found to start with any parcelbroker service to be quite cheap on heavy goods. I checked parcelbroker.co.uk website today and for example 50cm x 50cm x 50cm @ 15Kg comes in via UPS for £7.50 + VAT UK Mainland 24 hours.

 

[Jonathan Black]

Hi,

I would recommend using a reseller such as parcel2go, interparcel or P4D. You will be able to use different delivery companies for your products depending on where they are strong (UPS for your small parcels, Palletways for your pallets etc).

They will send you one invoice too, and give you one point of contact for your customer service queries.

All the best!

 

[unstoppable]

Here's my dilemma - I've checked on parcel2go and p4d and on average I'll be paying almost £7-10 per box! For around 6 boxes it equates to around 45-50! That will kill my profit. I know that competitors are using couriers and not paying that much. What am I missing? Is there another category of couriers which isn't visible on these comparison sites? How do I find them? I am sure other wholesale businesses out there use 'preferred suppliers' and don't go on comparison sites every time they have to send out parcels. If you have to send out 10s of orders a week that will way too time consuming admin wise also.

I would love to hear from some wholesale businesses here for some advice on this please.

Sorry for this duplicate post but I think post sits better on this thread.

 

[gingerdad]

We use a carrier for boxes and a couple of pallet carriers for larger stuff. One for local and one for national.

But it's all about volume if you want decent rates with carriers direct and if low volumes the brokers can be the best way forward.