Reindeers And Turkeys
Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer, and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Dunder and Blixem!
The 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Moore introduced generations of children to the eight reindeers that dutifully helped Santa deliver presents to kids who’d been nice. Santa’s sleigh operation was remarkable for its 100 percent on-time delivery —all completed during the night before Christmas — and delivery success rate (save for a few households where the parent neglected to clean the chimney).
The holidays are upon us. In our hyper-consumerist culture, we demand the same metrics that made children squeal with joy on Christmas morn, except that we want to squeal sooner — the day after Thanksgiving would be quite ideal. Many retailers rely on this huge shopping day called Black Friday to finally “go into the black” and become profitable for the calendar year. In 2018, people lining up at 5 AM (or earlier) to rush the store is still a thing. But thanks to social media, there is also a counter-thing where people share YouTube videos of in-store stampedes over a pancake griddle, or Facebook posts about “hiking in the woods” and “not consuming” on Black Friday. Because, of course, now one has the option of taking advantage of online deals and discounts offered prior to Thanksgiving and having everything delivered over the long weekend, before Cyber Monday even rolls around.
E-commerce and fast, convenient delivery options have saved us from the misery and insanity of physically fighting to get the best deals off the shelves — with little sacrifice to our desire for instant gratification. But the bottom line is retailers still have got to make money, while consumers are not only looking for the lowest-priced product but also its shipping fee. “Free” always wins, and all things being equal, promising next-day or same-day delivery, or a “receive by” date that is earlier than what the next site offers, helps keep the shopper from abandoning cart.
It is ironic, though not unexpected, that during a season when retailers give shipping carriers the most business while they experience the strongest pressure on their own margins, some logistics “partners” would turn around and slap a holiday surcharge on package deliveries. But this is precisely what happens. UPS, for example, levies a minimum $0.27 per package “peak” surcharge for its ground service to residential addresses. And both UPS and FedEx have surcharges, sometimes in the hundreds of dollars, for oversized packages and packages that require special handling during the holiday period. To make matters worse, FedEx even throws its delivery guarantee out the window by suspending the money-back promise for its ground and home delivery service for packages picked up between 11/26 and Christmas Eve 🤯
In contrast, AxleHire is a completely shipper-friendly carrier — year-round. How are we different?
🎁 We don’t impose holiday surcharges.
🎁 We charge by package dimensions only, making our rates easier to figure out, and there’s no chance of having to pay overages for exceeding weight and size limits, as we don’t apply surcharges for these attributes during the holidays, or ever.
🎁 We won’t let you make a delivery promise to your customers that we can’t help you keep.
We may not be as delightfully airborne as Santa’s reindeers (yet), but we’d like to think we come close. We strive to bring joy to package recipients and a sense of accomplishment to logistics managers. In case you still can’t tell who’s naughty or nice, below we offer a few more insights that could probably explain why our e-commerce deliveries are poised to increase by 1,000 percent this holiday season.
It’s a turkey-and-egg thing.
As a budding retailer, unless you can afford a data god (in-house PhD or outside consultant + $$$ enterprise software) who knows how to collect and parse information regarding each aspect of your shipping operations — volume, package dimensions, routes, seasonality, recipient preferences, etc. — and jive it with the offerings of available carriers with their opaque and ever-changing service options, disclaimers, restrictions, and surcharges, it is really difficult to choose the most cost-efficient solution for your shipping needs. But unless your margins are large enough because you didn’t get squeezed by your carrier during retail’s most important season, it is equally challenging to amass the kind of surplus funds that would cover your data god’s salary.
But you can have your turkey and keep the egg too.
AxleHire is easy on your margins. Upfront, most shippers will find us 10–30 percent cheaper than FedEx and UPS. We are competitive as a last-mile carrier thanks to our efficient routing algorithms, low overhead, and streamlined operations. Our investors are not throwing money for us to subsidize shipments and lock in customers, only to raise prices later. If we didn’t think we could do this work for you and for the long haul better and more cost-effectively than our brand-name competitors, we wouldn’t have gotten into this space at all.
What’s more, our pricing scheme is extremely transparent and simple. You do not need a rocket scientist to help make projections or decipher bills. AxleHire’s menu is free of gluten, soy, allergens, and accessorial fees — no residential surcharge, fuel surcharge, signature collection fee, address correction fee — nada. Did you know that FedEx has a dry ice surcharge of $5.70 per shipment? Now you do. (By the way, AxleHire deploys refrigerated trucks for perishables.)
When a Fortune 100 data god and a jack-of-all-trades start-up operations director both settled on AxleHire for their widely divergent shipping needs, we knew we’re onto something. There is bounty for all, and cost savings that you keep to help grow your business.
Have turkey. Like, literally.
If you’re evaluating carrier options but all this still feels abstract, take off your logistics hat for a moment and think about your holiday preparations. Are you starting to panic? Don’t! We invite you to check out some ready-to-cook meal kits offered by our wonderful partners Martha & Marley Spoon, Hello Fresh, and Gobble. West Coast customers will have the peace of mind knowing that their Thanksgiving feast or regular subscription box will be delivered by AxleHire’s next-day service, with their choice of delivery windows and real-time tracking. No more running to the store at 10 PM on Wednesday night in a frantic hunt for celery.
So enjoy your turkey (or turkey analog). Black Friday madness is almost here, but as they say …
Cecilia Tom
Cecilia is passionate about building efficient and resilient systems for the greater good. She is the lead storyteller for AxleHire.
