Royal Mail: We are seeing an increasing number of larger sized parcels being sent through our network

[TrueBlueTerrier]

https://postandparcel.info/157328/news/ ... r-network/

Royal Mail has announced it is installing ten new large parcel conveyors at its mail centres in the coming months, as part of its continued drive to improve efficiency and meet growing demand for parcel deliveries ahead of the peak Christmas period.

The conveyors, which will speed up parcel sorting and improve their tracking, will be deployed at mail centres where large parcels are currently mostly sorted by hand. The new technology will help Royal Mail to meet increasing demand for parcels, especially of a larger size.

Christmas is Royal Mail’s busiest period, with around double the normal volume of parcels processed.

Since 2017, the average size of a parcel handled by Royal Mail has increased by more than 25%, and the number of large parcels (bigger than a shoebox) handled has more than doubled.

Royal Mail’s in-house engineering team initially designed and built a new large parcel conveyor for the Midlands Parcel Hub, using belts instead of the typical rollers. The same design is now being rolled out across its mail centres.

The original large parcel conveyors are live at Royal Mail’s Gatwick and South Midlands Mail Centres, and installations are now taking place at Jubilee and Tyneside. Ahead of Christmas, conveyors will be deployed at Medway, Birmingham, Leeds, Home Counties North and Belfast. Chelmsford, Greenford and Bristol will have theirs installed by February next year.

Neil Chaplain, Royal Mail’s Engineering and Process Design Director, said: “We are seeing an increasing number of larger sized parcels being sent through our network as online shopping habits continue to evolve. The addition of our in-house designed large parcel conveyers to some of our busiest mail centres will help us automate the handling of them as much as possible and increase efficiency, especially as we head into the peak Christmas shopping period.”

Royal Mail is also installing an additional three Parcel Sortation Machines at its mail centres, adding to the 36 currently in operation.

[scotchy1962]

Well done RM..... only thing you have to do now is supply your workforce with the tools to deliver these large parcels, a few trolleys to cart these monsters around would be handy and probably need to increase all vans to a larger model so we can pile them in.

[wally7]

The question i ask is what does parcel force do?delivery the small stuff that a go through letter box's I just don't get it.

[Barnacle]

Parcel Force is completely invisible to RM. It is utterly bizarre.

[77SAMPOST77]

Parcelforce are taking a small number of royal parcels on a trial basis at the moment ,

The quantity on this trial basis is only a few dozen a day but we have the capacity to take thousands if and when required ,

Not sure when the trial ends .

[Barnacle]

Parcelforce are taking a small number of royal parcels on a trial basis at the moment ,

The quantity on this trial basis is only a few dozen a day but we have the capacity to take thousands if and when required ,

Not sure when the trial ends .

So a kind of, ‘Let’s give them a few parcels, see how they go’, nonsense

[77SAMPOST77]

The question i ask is what does parcel force do?delivery the small stuff that a go through letter box's I just don't get it.

We hardly get any small stuff that goes through a letterbox ,

Most parcels are big heavy items between 20-30kg it is backbreaking work and most routes are planned to 10 hour days ,

If you have any small stuff going spare we would love to do them to lighten the load .

[Barnacle]

The question i ask is what does parcel force do?delivery the small stuff that a go through letter box's I just don't get it.

Parcel Force go round all the businesses with the large parcels on a timed delivery route and also do collections.

There’s literally a business that’s part of RM sitting right there, fully capable of taking the large parcels. But RM have PF blindness. Drives me nuts.

[77SAMPOST77]

Parcelforce are taking a small number of royal parcels on a trial basis at the moment ,

The quantity on this trial basis is only a few dozen a day but we have the capacity to take thousands if and when required ,

Not sure when the trial ends .

So a kind of, ‘Let’s give them a few parcels, see how they go’, nonsense

I would not describe it as nonsense ,

Royal mail seem to have more parcels than they can cope with whereas Parcelforce are short of work ,
it makes sense to give work to Parcelforce but the problem is the 2 systems on the PDA are incompatible hence the trial to try and sort that out .
Hopefully they can sort this out soon and Parcelforce can take the pressure off royal mail staff and help with there parcels .

[Barnacle]

Parcelforce are taking a small number of royal parcels on a trial basis at the moment ,

The quantity on this trial basis is only a few dozen a day but we have the capacity to take thousands if and when required ,

Not sure when the trial ends .

So a kind of, ‘Let’s give them a few parcels, see how they go’, nonsense

I would not describe it as nonsense ,

Royal mail seem to have more parcels than they can cope with whereas Parcelforce are short of work ,
it makes sense to give work to Parcelforce but the problem is the 2 systems on the PDA are incompatible hence the trial to try and sort that out .
Hopefully they can sort this out soon and Parcelforce can take the pressure off royal mail staff and help with there parcels .

RM have the same parcels, we’ve just split the larger ones off for DPR routes.

Amazing that they didn’t look at making it possible to scan both PF & RM parcels on the PDA before kicking off DPR routes.

[Rve83ndxd]

RM have the same parcels, we’ve just split the larger ones off for DPR routes.

Amazing that they didn’t look at making it possible to scan both PF & RM parcels on the PDA before kicking off DPR routes.

Pretty sure you can

[Barnacle]

RM have the same parcels, we’ve just split the larger ones off for DPR routes.

Amazing that they didn’t look at making it possible to scan both PF & RM parcels on the PDA before kicking off DPR routes.

Pretty sure you can

I’d be amazed if the option wasn’t there, but at present, if you scan a PF parcel with a RM pda, it just beeeeeeeps at you. So it isn’t activated.

[Mr Rush]

Parcelforce was retooled twenty years ago to focus on timed delivery, rather than large parcels cast off RM's network. I've had the PF guy at my door with a jiffy bag because the business sent it 48 hour timed, meanwhile a colleague had a literal kitchen sink the other day because it was presumably a non-urgent order.

[britwrit]

I have no idea what goes on up above me but I wouldn't rule out managerial turf wars as well.

[TopperGas]

Parcelforce was retooled twenty years ago to focus on timed delivery, rather than large parcels cast off RM's network. I've had the PF guy at my door with a jiffy bag because the business sent it 48 hour timed, meanwhile a colleague had a literal kitchen sink the other day because it was presumably a non-urgent order.

Virtually every parcel bigger than shoe box sized is now sent RM Tracked 48 or 24 there's hardly anything sent non-urgent? I was speaking to a local PF driver a few weeks ago and he said it was so quiet on his round it was hardly worthwhile doing the job as he only had 50 parcels to deliver, whilst he gets the odd parcel which needs a trolley he usually just seems to be carrying similar sized parcels to us.

I've no idea why RM can't deliver everything up to 1m x 1m and PF everything bigger, this week we had a 1.5m x 1.5m box, try fitting that in a Doblo with another 50+ parcels!! c