- Bulk your orders
At Sendy we charge per kilometer as opposed to per package. This offers a great opportunity for you to save on delivery costs by bulking orders. If you aggregate your orders depending on your customers order frequency and route, you can choose to send orders out twice a day, once a day, once every two days and so on.
Here’s an example of a route with bulk deliveries and the same route done by 3 different riders.
Route with 3 different riders
3 separate orders, one package each would cost you KES 750.
1 bulked order, with three packages only cost you KES 410.
By bulking your deliveries, you save KES 340! It’s as if you got one of the deliveries free!
2. Choose SendyConnect
SendyConnect is great for deliveries that are not time bound. With SendyConnect, a Rider is allocated to multiple orders along the same route — picking up and dropping off other SendyConnect orders along the same path. It’s like UberPool.
Save up to 30% on an order by choosing the SendyConnect option when available.
3. Reduce waiting time
Looking to move a big load of product, boxes, or furniture. Have your packages boxed and ready to load before the Sendy truck arrives.
Being prepared early is one of the easiest ways to lower delivery costs as you avoid waiting fees which are charged after 30 minutes of the Driver arriving at the pickup or drop-off location.
Here are a couple of ways you can reduce waiting time:
- Have a checklist of all the documents and items that need to be ready for delivery for the dispatch manager to work through when preparing an order.
- Ensure all the items, invoices and other delivery documents are at the dispatch area before delivery vehicle arrives.
- Sensitize your customer to be ready to receive an order so that they also don’t accrue waiting charges if they are the ones paying for the order.
- If you are delivering to a store, ask the receiving team what the least busy times for delivery are and organize to deliver your goods at those times to cut down on waiting time.
4. Request a larger vehicle
Requesting multiple vehicles per day? Why not request one, larger truck to do all your deliveries? You can save the decision making time by working out ahead of time what size vehicle you need for different load types.
Here is a hypothetical example of an electronics company. This calculation helps the dispatch manager know what type of vehicle to order depending on the loadsize that is going out.
5. Schedule Deliveries
By scheduling deliveries ahead of time, you get the opportunity to explore the most cost effective delivery solution for your business and start the deliveries extra early in the morning to maximize your day.
To ensure you get a bike, truck or van on time:
- Learn your customers’ ordering patterns and plan your distribution route based on this. For example you could choose to distribute to east Nairobi on Monday, west Nairobi on tuesday etc.
- Schedule deliveries on the Sendy platform up to a week in advance.
- If you’ve got recurring deliveries you don’t have to input them every time. Simply save the route the first time and the next time you come to schedule your deliveries you can pull it up immediately.
Have other special tips on how to save money in distribution? Share them with us.
