So you’ve just started working or own a new business in South Florida, or maybe you´ve been in business for many years now but since last year realized there is a major demand for businesses to deliver products or services to their clients’ homes and offices. And even if you´ve read about the new statistics regarding products being home delivered, or you just know in your gut that the customer behavior is now changing, and since last year’s covid-19 outbreak the process has only accelerated, you don’t really know how to solve this. You are sure you need to start delivering but you now realize that your entire business may change, since deliveries have a cost, and now you will have to take that into consideration. Whether you decide to charge your clients for deliveries or to take the price upon yourself hoping for better customer loyalty, you will probably see some changes regarding the profitability of your products.

 

So, how can you now respond to this emerging  consumer habit in South Florida?

 

Businesses used to have only two options to solve this: they could use one of the major national carriers, such as FedEx, UPS, or USPS, or they could hire their own drivers to do the job.

If you chose to work with a national carrier, you would get accountability for the service provided and reasonable prices for deliveries within a week. The most common service used by businesses that deliver this way is Ground Shipping. This kind of service ensures that packages will be picked up on the same day, but they may be delivered within a week or so because they need to go to distribution centers to be sorted. So this may be inconvenient for clients that want to receive their products as quickly as possible. This may be suitable for long mile deliveries, but it’s definitely not the best choice for local deliveries.

 

In the second option, you would have to hire your own drivers, or maybe hire independent drivers to do the job. While this may seem like a good idea, because you may be paying less money per stop, in the long term, it most likely will backfire on you. Implementing a successful delivery for big operations means you will have to hire drivers, dispatchers, operation managers, buy tracking software, etc. So this may not be suitable for most businesses. And if you choose to hire independent drivers to take care of a small operation, first of all, make sure your operation maintains small, because if it gets too big for the drivers to handle (and it will) you will get into trouble. Our 20 years of experience in the courier business tells us that problems will come, drivers can get a flat tire, or they can get caught in traffic, etc. When these moments do come it’s better to be prepared.

 

 

The good news is, now there is a better answer to this situation: local couriers. Yes, when businesses need to make local deliveries, their best choice is local couriers. They can provide great prices for fast deliveries and they may have tracking and confirmation technology, or they may even have refrigerated vehicles or other features. If you have special requests from clients, a local courier can accommodate that. If you need to move your packages on coolers to maintain your products at a certain temperature, local couriers can provide that. If you need to keep a record of all deliveries for administrative reasons, or even connect your system directly to the courier system, so when deliveries are placed they go directly to them through an API, local couriers may be able to provide that as well.