Nightfreight is a specialist delivery business with a well-established national distribution network capable of handling items of all weights and dimensions. The company made a name because of its specialism in handling ‘difficult’ parcels, but in fact its overall offering is quite diverse covering a full range of delivery options including next day and three day delivery, 2-man home delivery and a dedicated contract logistics service. Earlier this year Nightfreight launched a ‘Pay as You Go’ 2 man home delivery service designed to save retailers up to 50% of their existing transport costs. This new delivery solution is the UK’s only independent shared user network service available to retailers on a pay as you go basis for an unlimited range of products. Nightfreight’s Managing Director Peter Louden talks to WLN.
WLN – Peter, can you summarise exactly what Nightfreight does?
Nightfreight is first and foremost a parcels carrier, with about 90% of our 5,000 customer accounts consisting of network operations made up of classic overnight deliveries and what is often termed “difficult” freight. However, we are also a major player in the two-man home delivery sector and our Deliver2home service now accounts for more than £40 million of our revenue. We also operate a range of other specialist home delivery options and a dedicated logistics service.
The company currently employs over 2,300 staff at over 70 operating sites around the United Kingdom and operates in excess of 1,000 vehicles. Last year we successfully delivered over 18 million items and have a turnover of £140 million pa.
WLN – Can you tell us more about the Nightfreight ‘Pay as You Go’ home delivery service?
The service, is managed through our Deliver2Home division and is targeted at medium and large retailers who are currently using fixed cost resources such as dedicated vehicles and warehousing, either in-house or through a third party, which have to be paid for fifty-two weeks of the year, regardless of usage. The savings, up to 50%, can be made through reducing or eliminating these fixed costs and replacing them with a variable charging structure (Pay as You Go) that directly relates to the number of deliveries required. As a result, retailers will be able to deal with peaks and troughs throughout the year without incurring unnecessary price penalities.
Other benefits of the service include the ability to deal with difficult geographical demands – Deliver2Home offers a daily delivery to 90% of UK postcodes and with varying weekly delivery timetables to all other postcodes areas – guaranteed service levels, a web based booking system and track and trace.
WLN – What is behind your decision to launch it?
Now more than ever retailers are facing increased delivery and fuel costs, customer demand for higher levels of service and an uncertain market. Understandably they need to look to their supply chains as a way of saving money or risk seeing their margins eroded by distribution costs. Nightfreight’s unique ‘Pay as You Go’ solution will enable them to save up to 50% of their costs whilst maximising productivity levels within their remaining in house and/or third party assets.”
WLN – So is home delivery becoming an increasingly important part of your business and how else are you targeting this area?
Home delivery is a growing market, and there’s a clear move towards outsourcing among online, catalogue and high-street retailers. This creates an opportunity for us to expand in this market.
The Nightfreight network has the ability to deliver a wide range of products to anywhere in the UK including anything from lamp posts and digger buckets to mattresses, treadmills and swimming pools. Deliver2home draws on Nightfreight’s experience of handling awkward products to enable retail and manufacturing customers to concentrate on their core activities safe in the knowledge that their products will be delivered by an expert on-time and undamaged.
We also offer other specialist solutions within our home delivery business such as an ultra high quality white-glove service called Pacemaker, which includes assembly and installation of furniture and similar products, as well as a next-day one-man service for items up to 30 kilograms.
WLN – How are you adapting your business to meet customer requirements?
The two-man business has also given rise to a further business offshoot, network dedicated logistics, which is capable of delivering the complete spectrum of consignments for customers. We currently have around 25 customers signed-up to dedicated contracts, with many using customer liveried delivery vehicles.
These contracts include both B2B and B2C operations, providing services that exploit the skill and resource base of our existing operations. In addition, we can handle low volume traffic flows through our network, reserving the dedicated activities to those operations that demand them, so it’s an ideal mix-and-match opportunity that few other providers can match. Integration is key to a profitable operation, with customers increasingly wanting variable costs and dedication. Hybrid solutions are the answer to this.
WLN – Finally what differentiates Nightfreight from other parcel operators?
In all honesty, parcels delivery is a global game so we are never going to be in the same league as the international consolidators. We take a different approach where our focus is on service, not volume, with the aim of getting the simple things right first time. Mind you, this is not to say we don’t have a substantial operation. We are big enough to have scale, but not so big that operations become unduly complicated.
We see ourselves as rather unique within the market in terms of offering two-man deliveries alongside our parcels business. For us, it is an ideal mix as the depots are generally involved with two-man deliveries during the day and the parcels operations at night.
Currently 22 of the 50 depots handle the two-man operations, and the company is planning to increase that number to around 28 or 29.
We have also found that the parcels and two-man operations have different seasonalities. As a result, we able to achieve a more balanced work load over the year and make the best use of our available resources. We possess a ready-made national network of depots, so it makes a lot of sense to use this valuable asset as much as possible.
Nightfreight
www.nightfreight.co.uk
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