I presume they have a good contract

Working in the garden today, when a ParcelForce van turned-up

Large white plastic envelope ‘Courier Pack’ … comfortably bigger than A4 format

Contents:

Delivery Note + Delivery Advice Note [i.e. two sheets of A4]

Zip-Loc bag containing Qty. 25

M6 TYPE-VS SERRATED SAFETY WASHER - SPRING STEEL

They certainly look the part, and they cost me a grand total of £1.50

… How do you do it, Zoro ?

MichaelG.

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Edit: __ This is the item: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115547491645

but I note they have increased the price already !

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 26/10/2022 23:12:49

My recent experience was a little different - 9 separate zip-lock packets containing 25 each of various BA and metric steel bolts and nuts, with card headers, all wrapped in a folded copy of the paid invoice, and delivered by regular post in a padded post bag no larger than A5 in size. Took less than a week to get to me from the other side of the city. Cost of postage was $9.70, contents cost about $70. Happy with that.

Some companies with very high volumes of shipping pay their carriers a percentage of monthly shipping value, not a per-parcel charge, whilst almost all pay a heavily discounted rate compared to private customers. Either way, for accounting purposes delivery costs are often taken overall, not costed to each job, and as a percentage of overall costs many small packages may be balanced out by a single large order (Zoro for example sell £50k machines as well as a lot of £100+ cutters).

Brian G

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Hence my choice of subject title

It’s just the terrible waste in the execution of such contracts that I was trying to highlight.

… presumably it all works out nicely for both parties on a ‘total cost’ calculation.

MichaelG.

Michael,

You did much better than my recent order.

I "had" to top my silver steel stock, ordered £34 worth, took 12 days to arrive. Parcel Force spent 7 days driving it around the county.

Glad that's off my chest!

Jim