Pallet Track has taken a five year lease, with the option of a further five years, on Titan 10, a new 267,290 sq ft warehouse on Millfields Road in Bilston. The agreed rent is in excess of £1 million a year exclusive of rates. King Sturge and Colliers CRE represented landlords Threadneedle Investment Managers and Zurich Assurance.
Read MoreThe Isle of Man’s distribution company, Manxx Independent Carriers, is rolling out an innovative system for tracking parcels and freight using a new international ‘databank’ called PODXchange. Developed by NetDespatch, PODXchange is a web portal for proof of delivery (POD).
Manx drivers are being equipped with special mobile devices incorporating barcode scanners and a touchsceen. When deliveries are made and signed for, details of the shipment held in the barcode can be transmitted live to the web portal along with the captured electronic signature. Scan and POD data as well as signatures is then transformed into the appropriate carrier format and transmitted to Manx’s customers that include most major UK parcel carriers.
The portal accepts data from any POD system – for any parcel – and then makes it available via the Internet to any carrier. Manx is already delivering on behalf of all the major parcel carriers including Fedex, UPS, DPD, Citylink, Parcelnet and Amtrak. Using one device, Manx can now provide a live signature POD to any of these companies. The intelligent system recognises the carrier from the barcode on the parcel ensuring that each carrier only retrieves data on their own parcels.
First used in the Highlands of Scotland for parcel deliveries handled by AJG, the system is being implemented by Manx so that is can be used for all types of deliveries. “We travelled to Inverness to see the first PODXchange implementation in action with courier firm AJG parcels. It was immediately evident that it had real potential and we realised we could develop the first true multi-service POD solution giving our customers live updates on anything we delivered whether a parcel, pallet, an item of plant or a fresh food delivery,” says Coleman.
Read MoreAfter sickness levels reached almost 6.5 pct of the entire workforce in 2004, Royal Mail has continued to concentrate on bringing levels of absenteeism down to acceptable levels.
Whilst the tactics used by Royal Mail to get employees back into work quickly have sometimes come in for criticism, absenteeism had reached such extraordinary proportions; it had little choice but to tackle the problem from all sides. Now employees can expect phone calls at home as well as medical assesments independent of their own GP. At one point, around 10,000 workers out of a total of 170,000, were off work.
Royal Mail also introduced incentives of prize draws for staff that had good attendance records but has in more recent years tried to persuade some of it’s tobacco-hooked employees to kick the habit after it made working areas smoke-free. Time taken out for ‘fag breaks’ is said to lose employers a significant amount of money as well as contributing to poor health and fitness in employees.
This year, Royal Mail is sending a 13.6-metre mobile training vehicle to 34 Royal Mail depots to promote health & safety awareness. Staff will have access to a range of services, based around shift patterns. Despite the costs involved in tacking absenteeism, Royal Mail said it was still significantly less than money lost through time taken off by employees.
Read MorePalletline has announced plans to invest GBP 20 million in new Central Hub premises on a 15-acre site in Solihull.
The operational systems planned for the new hub have been designed to enable the organisation to function more efficiently than any other palletised distribution network in the country, creating the systems and capacity to process more than 25,000 pallets in each 24-hour time window.
Palletline’s new hub will be the industry’s first drive-through, side-load operation.
An on-site quality control centre will consist of vehicle scanning lanes capable of processing eighty vehicles an hour and an undercover area for load checking. This system effectively separates quality control from sortation activities and enables implementation of rigorous freight checking procedures to achieve total traceability and service consistency.
Every vehicle coming onto the site will be issued with a data card to track its exact location, identifying every pallet on every vehicle and highlighting freight requiring prioritisation for meeting connections.
Web-based systems will be used to create ‘virtual bay’ facilities accessible to every member company, clearly highlighting volumes and consignment information.
The move will also secure Palletline’s expansion plans, yielding capacity for growth through to 2020, more than trebling existing pallet throughput capacity. Login or register to post.
Read MoreThe humble postcard is making a comeback, according to figures which suggest the texting generation has not abandoned the art of writing completely.
The glory days of the picture postcard was in post-war Britain.
Years after their demise was predicted, postcards are landing on British doormats in greater numbers than ever before.
The rise has been driven by nostalgia as holidaymakers return to sending traditional messages.
According to Royal Mail, 135 million post cards were delivered last year, an increase of 30 million compared to 2003.
Museums and other attractions have started to sell postcards in far greater numbers, according to a spokesman at the Royal Mail, explaining why so many more cards were being sent.
The increasing number of foreign holidays and short breaks has also helped to spark the renaissance of the humble 6 inch by 4 inch card.
The revival of the postcard goes some way to offsetting the slow demise of the stamped letter.
The Royal Mail, two months ago, admitted it handled three million fewer stamped letters each day.
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