Due to the ever-increasing appetite of consumers for speed when it comes to shipping, retailers like Walmart, Target, and e-commerce titans like Amazon.com, are now offering free one-day day delivery. Moreover, some of these companies are even presenting a same-day option if you possess a premium membership.
Speedy delivery is all well and good, but by offering this tight turnaround, retailers are putting tons of pressure on both suppliers and trucking companies.
In fact, just this year Walmart intensified its requirements for its “on-time, in-full” system. With this program the company has increased expectations for on-time delivery and adding urgency to the concept of delivering in-full. This part of the program demands that all items delivered are contained within one trailer.
Because of these company measures trucking operations now have to achieve both performance benchmarks. There’s no doubt this is going to be difficult to do on a consistent basis.
What Do New Measures Mean?
With this new ‘in-full’ measure, Walmart suppliers are required to have 95% of a typical merchandise order and 97.5% of a food order in the truck. Also, in order for deliveries to be considered ‘on-time’, the shipments must show up in their scheduled time-frame. Consequently, this may prevent the shippers from holding the order until there’s enough inventory to complete the original order.
Target, on the other hand, went public in June with the fact that online shoppers in at least 47 states can get their purchases delivered on the same day if they pay a standard fee of $9.99 per order. The corporation, headquartered in Minneapolis, partners with Shipt, which a membership centered, same-day delivery platform. Target purchased the company in December 2017 in order to achieve their same-day delivery option.
Another wrinkle in retailer’s delivery approach is offering a variety of locations for package drop-off. For instance, Amazon allows customers to shift the location of where orders are left. These include lockers, garages, and hotel foyers.
What do you all think is this instant gratification model of delivery sustainable for truckers and suppliers?
