A s with previous parcels surveys, we didn't let on who
Page 44
Page 45
Page 46
Page 47
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
we were. We installed ourselves at the Southampton premises of Volvo truck dealer Princes Commercials, and contacted a list of parcels operators from the Southampton area Yellow Pages. Our consignment (12 versions of the same item to be precise—one for each carrier) was a fairly fragile lkg box of truck light-bulbs. It had to reach our "colleagues", Eurotruck in Inverness, almost 600 miles away, by the end of the next working day. The only other condition we put on the job was that we wanted to settle the bill with the drivers on the spot, rather than by account. But to make the drivers' lives easier we gave them a personal cheque (bar Red Star which requested payment by credit card), remembering the confusion that paying by cash had caused in the past.
As in previous years, the prices varied enor
mously. The cheapest, City Link, was willing to do the job for an astonishingly reasonable £8.52, while the most expensive, Red Star, asked us to part with £32.72. Red Star's price, presumably based on a rail journey most of the way, should reassure truck operators that even on long hauls and direct rail routes, the railways are always going to find it hard to compete with road haulage.
• COLLECTIONS
At 11:55hr the first driver arrived, from Direct Link. He was bang on time in his unliveried red van and was wearing a casual, but smart outfit. We were quite relieved to see him, because the receptionist taking the details of the job had not instilled us with much confidence in the operation. It sounded as though the receptionist was taking orders on a mobile phone and he did not ask us for much information. His saving grace was that he didn't waste time. The driver, however, made us feel that the parcel was in safe hands. He was waiting patiently with a delivery note, already filled out, when we arrived with our box of light-bulbs and he had been warned in advance that we planned to pay him cash.
Next, at 12:00hrs, came the driver for Red Star . He had not been told whether we had paid for the job. In fact we had been informed that if we did not want to set up an account we would have to pay by Mastercard or Visa. His pen did not work, and when we asked him if we had marked the parcel sufficiently to show it was delicate, he replied that "some of them" wouldn't notice if we had written "fragile" in letters 10ft high.
He was also let down by his appearance. He was not wearing a uniform and because he was a sub-contractor to Red Star he drove a van with a livery with nothing to do with parcels, which could be disconcerting to some customers. However, he was friendly and we could not help thinking that everything had been conspiring against him.
Then the van from Delta Couriers arrived at 12:35hrs. It was a smart vehicle with a striking, but subtle livery but he driver did not wear a uniform. He was confused when we gave him the cheque, a form of payment we had agreed with staff back in his office. He told us that the cheque, which we had been told to make payable to the driver, should not have included VAT because it was for him personally. However, he took the cheque anyway and we heard no more from him. He gave us a receipt and left.
Next was DHL at 13:00hrs. The driver wore company uniform and was one of the smartest dressed we dealt with. He had an impressive hand-held computer to log the collection, but it was not his day. The computer would not accept that we wanted to pay by cheque and it took him 20 minutes, on and off the phone to his office, to get the job recorded. Meanwhile, another driver had been and gone within three minutes, The DHL driver seemed remarkably =flummoxed by the hold-up and explained that the computer had been "playing up all day", However, he failed to ask us to open the box for him to do a security check, although his office had told us that this was standard procedure. We had deliberately sealed the package to make things awkward. However, he left without mentioning that we should have left it open and told us that a receipt would be sent in the post.
The Express International driver, who turned up at 13:10hr, was completely unaware of the commotion which was going on with the DHL driver. He had a receipt waiting for us when we gave him the parcel and the whole transaction was refreshingly hassle-free. 1110 His sweater and van both displayed the company logo.
The next arrival was unmistakably City Link at 14:00hrs. A bright green liveried truck and a driver dressed in a matching anorak and boiler suit left us in no doubt which company they were from. The driver handed us a collection note and was happy enough to write us out a receipt.
The Business Post driver was next at 14:07hrs. His smart yellow and black uniform matched his vehicle. He had a receipt prepared for us and left without wasting any time on pleasantries.
Then came Panic Link at 14:45hrs. Its driver was around two hours later than the receptionist had forecast. But he was friendly and was the only driver to banter, which was quite refreshing after a morning with little identical brown boxes for company. He seemed to enjoy his job, perhaps because, as he informed us cheerily, his boss had spent the day on the CB singing Christmas carols. He was business-like, efficient and left us a receipt without being asked.
We then had to wait until 15:48hrs for the TNT driver to arrive. The collection went smoothly, with the driver offering us a receipt. He was wearing a smart grey uniform and driving a liveried Iveco Ford truck.
Then at 15:55hrs probably the most professional driver of the day arrived: an owner-driver who worked for NFC subsidiary Lynx. He turned up in an immaculate van, with the recently introduced blue version of the well-known black Lynx livery. He was dressed in a matching blue uniform, with a tie also bearing the Lynx logo. He took the time to explain how he fitted into the Lynx structure and then he turned the questioning on to us. He was very tenacious in trying to find out which carrier we normally used and where he should send his sale details. After his interrogation he left, having given us our receipt.
Next was Xpedite International at 16:07hrs, fortunately sufficiently far behind the Lynx driver, who would inevitably have asked a torrent of other questions had he seen a rival courier arrive. The Xpedite driver was trendily dressed. He was armed with sales literature and gave us a run-down on how the company had expanded from a site in Heathrow to an outlet in Southampton in the past five months. He wrote us a receipt and left in a car.
Last came Parcelforce at 16:45hrs. Fortunately, the driver was much more pleasant than the irritable receptionist, who made Victor Meldrew sound cheerful and obliging. In fact, had we not being doing a survey and instead been real customers, we would certainly have told her to forget the collection: a rude voice on the phone is just about the biggest turn-off a business can have. When we asked when the driver was likely to be with us she snapped the useless reply: "I really can't say, it will be some time during the working day." The driver, however, went out of his way to help. He did not have a receipt, but offered to send us one and sure enough it arrived two days after we did the survey.
• DELIVERIES
The next morning, CM was waiting patiently at Volvo Truck service dealer, Eurotruck in Inverness harbour for the first parcel to arrive. Dealership service manager John Tracey reckoned that Parcelforce would be first to arrive and sure enough at 09:26hrs a familiar red van came into view. However, it was a false alarm and the van passed by.
At 10:14hrs the real thing at last and yes, Tracey was proved right as Parcelforce delivered the first two packages of the day in a fairly clean S-reg Leyland Dot 45.130. The driver politely asked for a signature for the package with Parcelforce and for another he has carried for Direct Link.
At 10:20hrs Red Star followed hot on Parcelforce's heels in a presentable white Sherpa van, only let down by the rather scruffy appearance of the driver.
Three packages delivered before 10:30hrs seemed a promising start leading to hopes that the whole job might be completed by midday. Even the sun came out, dispelling the earlier gloom. However, what seemed like an eternity passed before the next delivery arrived.
City Link's package was delivered at 12:20hrs by local carrier Inverness Express Deliveries in a fairly clean blue and white Ford van, somewhat dented in front. The driver was clean and presentable in a green jumper and blue trousers.
And that was it until well after lunch. Meanwhile the tide began to drift out, a solitary fishing boat sailed into the Moray Firth and sailed out again. Time passed.
Another local carrier, North Parcels, pulled into the entrance at 14:50hrs in an orange and white liveried Mercedes 814 with rather distressed bodywork. The smartly turned out driver had four packages, Panic Link, Business Post, Xpedite (which judging by the labelling has travelled part of the way with Business Post) and one unidentified package which had no external marking to suggest which company originally picked it up. The driver, a rather glum individual, shoved the parcels down and pushed the paperwork forward. He made no comment on the fact that he was delivering four identical parcels, other than "it's a lot of paperwork".
A parcel arrived at 15:10hrs on board a smart K-reg Ford Transit in Group 4 Nightspeed livery, the best looking vehicle so far. The driver imparted a sense of urgency by bounding out of his cab and running into Eurotruck at a brisk trot. He had a friendly manner and was the only carrier to ask for the individual to whom the parcel was addressed by name. What a pity then, that the parcel bore no identification as to which carrier picked it up in Southampton: Group 4 Nightspeed was not one of the original sending carriers. Next in, at 15:45hrs, was TNT in a rusting Leyland Daf 7.5-tormer. The driver, in a grey jumper with a pencil behind his ear, had a casual manner, but was friendly enough.
The last delivery of the day, at 16:50hrs, was from Lynx, in a reasonably presentable Leyland Daf G-reg, 10.13 Roadrunner. The cheerful driver had a uniform of grey jumper, matching trousers and open-necked shirt. When we asked him where we signed for the package on what is a complicated form, he simply pointed at the box.
The next day, after CM had returned south of the border, DHL showed up at 13:00hrs in an H-reg liveried Transit. No explanation was offered for the fact that the package was a day late. This was a rerun of DHL's poor performance in the 1993 parcel survey, when its package from Glasgow to Penzance failed to arrive the next day.
• CONCLUSION
All in all a creditable performance from the majority of operators, who delivered comfortably within the next-day deadline. Unfortunately, for two however, Express International and Delta, we were unable to identify their packages at the delivery end and so cannot award them any points for this aspect of the job. A shame, because the parcels certainly arrived (with no more information than our address label), one with Group 4 Nightspeed; the other with Inverness-based North Parcels. Once again, DHI., failed the test, arriving more than a day late, without explanation or apology, and among the three most costly carriers.
We noticed a surprisingly large gap in the cost of despatch with the the most expensive, Red Star, charging four times as much as the cheapest, City Link. Only a few of the operators provided more than a modest insurance for the package, (value .£20) and one of these was City Link. Fortunately, the packages all arrived undamaged.
As for an overall winner? Well, Lynx offered the best all-round service and was the third cheapest but was among the slowest in arriving. Direct Link was fastest and offered a good standard of service but at 123.50 was into the upper half of the price range. Both Red Star and Parcelforce turned in convincingly efficient performances but both were relatively expensive and suffered shortcomings in the areas of customer rapport. Taking all these factors into account, the overall winner on the day must be City Link, which was the cheapest, one of the fastest and offered good standards of collection and delivery.
But as we have said, with the notable exception of DI-fl. and a regretful inability to identify two parcels at the receiving end, the majority of operators provided convincing reasons to believe that their next-day services do what they say they will.
El by Juliet Morrison and Patric Cunnane.
• Commercial Motor would like to thank Volvo Truck dealership Princes Commercials in Southampton and Volvo service dealer Eurotruck in Inverness for providing parcels, office space and receiving facilities for this year's parcel survey.