Ever-expanding parcels

Nigel Thomas is a delivery driver based at Salford Delivery Office and has been a postman for 24 years.

In that time he says his mailbag has ‘changed dramatically’ and continues to evolve as parcels have got much bigger in size.

‘You see it on a daily basis,’ he said. ‘We’re delivering huge parcels – I’ve even had gaming chairs that people have bought through websites like Groupon. Recently, I had 24 bottles of drinking water ordered from Amazon.

‘We’re getting pretty hefty, big parcels and then at the other end of the scale we’re also getting smaller parcels. Little things from wish.com, and we’ll get 20-30 of those a day.’

With parcels getting bulkier, Nigel admitted it can be a ‘challenge’ transporting some items. He said investment in equipment for Delivery teams would help them in the future, as parcel volumes are expected to continue to grow.

‘When you’re going up to high-rise offices you need the proper tools,’ he added. ‘We have sack trucks, and they do help, but the way things are going we need investment.'

Customer habits have changed over the years too and this has affected deliveries, with increasing numbers of people choosing to have things sent to their workplace. With this in mind, he feels two daily deliveries is something that ‘should be looked at’.

‘Where I deliver it’s predominantly to professional people who are very rarely in throughout the day,’ he said. ‘In my office now we do a lot of Tracked items through Later Acceptance Times and we seem to be able to deliver them a heck of a lot better, because by the time they get to the customer it’s 3-4pm, so people are home from work or the school run.’