Need extra delivery support? Supplement your fleet with Dropoff

Around gift-giving holidays, like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas, florists, chocolatiers, bakeries and other retailers scramble to get deliveries out the door and to their recipients within a narrow time frame.

How do you deal with these seasonal changes to delivery requests? Many just roll with the punches. Drivers work long hours during peak season, and non-delivery staff make deliveries to fill the gap. On the other hand, many hire surplus staff. But that process must begin weeks before the holiday, and gauging the number of drivers needed is tough. Too few drivers, and you risk deliveries arriving late. Too many drivers, and you’re paying for unused time. Not to mention the fact that the need for extra drivers is only temporary.

If you have your own fleet, you probably encounter these scenarios on a regular basis. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. You can add on a same-day delivery service provider like Dropoff to supplement your fleet.

Here are a few scenarios where supplementing your fleet with Dropoff makes sense.

Regular drivers call in sick.

It happens to everyone – someone gets sick or suffers an injury and is unable to work at the last minute. Either you disappoint customers expecting their products, or you reallocate staff from much-needed tasks to driving delivery routes.

With Dropoff, you don’t have to make that choice. Just log into the online platform via your computer or mobile phone, and schedule your deliveries on-demand. Your driver can take the time to rest and recuperate, and customers still receive their deliveries as scheduled.

Related: Courier & Same-Day Delivery Service with ASAP, 2-hour, 4-hour Deliveries

Delivery staff need extra capacity during peak season.

Let’s say you run a bakery, and your business is absolutely booming during the holidays. Cake and cookie orders are up by 40 percent, and all of them need to be delivered to a long list of holiday parties and events.

Maybe you only have one vehicle in your fleet, and that’s plenty during the other 11 months of the year. But in December, you could really use 3 vehicles!

Dropoff can provide extra fleet support during times where you need a little burst capacity. Use your own driver and vehicle for orders closest to your business, and let Dropoff take care of further away, more time-consuming deliveries.

Related: Same-Day Delivery Solutions for the Food & Grocery Industry

Employees perform multiple functions, and today they can’t drive.

Many businesses have employees who wear various hats. A flower shop might have employees who function as floral arrangers, cashiers, cleaners, bookkeepers, and drivers.  

So maybe it’s Mother’s Day or Graduation Weekend. All your employees are needed in the store, creating floral arrangements and checking out customers as quickly as possible.  

Rather than pulling your highly-skilled floral arrangers off-task to make deliveries, plug Dropoff’s fleet in only when you need them. If you know you’ve got higher orders coming up, you can pre-schedule them using Dropoff’s online platform. Or if you don’t know until the day-of, take advantage of on-demand service.

Delivery of a larger item requires a bigger vehicle.

Not every business has the resources to buy a large van for deliveries. And because of the size of delivery items, it might not make financial sense to begin with.

There may be only a handful of larger items in your product catalog. In the past, you’ve rented a van to make the delivery yourself. Even if it is only a couple times a year, that takes a lot of time. Someone has to reserve and pick up the rental vehicle, pick up the item, deliver it, and return the rental vehicle.   

With Dropoff, you can specify the size of the item so delivery staff can bring the appropriate-sized vehicle. All you have to do is submit the order online or over the phone.

Give your delivery staff the support they need with supplemental fleet from Dropoff.

There are lots of factors that can wreak havoc on managing same-day delivery on your own. But, with a supplemental fleet like Dropoff, you’ll be ready when unexpected changes occur.

Want to learn more about our supplemental fleet? Contact us for a demo.