It may be the height of the summer holidays but retailers and businesses with delivery operations must start planning their Christmas fleet availability now in order to ensure they have suitable capacity in place to handle the busy festive period.

Last December, the explosion in one-day-long pre-Christmas shopping ‘events’ such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday really impacted the UK, bringing with them not only the unwholesome sight of people fighting over clothing and electrical goods, but a retail – or rather, delivery – headache of a different kind.

The rise and rise of e-commerce is widely documented and the changing shopping habits of consumers is having a massive impact on demand for delivery van operators. For the first time ever online retail sales broke through the £100bn barrier for the year in 2014 - representing growth of 14% for the online retail market in the UK, according to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index.

And, according to separate figures from Experian and IMRG, an estimated £810m was spent online on Black Friday 2014, the biggest ever day for UK online sales.

The Christmas shopping period as a whole, defined as the eight weeks between 2 November and 27 December, saw UK shoppers spend £21.6bn on gifts and bargains, equating to a solid 13% growth on the same period in 2013. 

Another area that has seen phenomenal growth in 2014 is ‘Click and Collect’, whereby online orders are picked up from a physical location rather than delivered to a purchaser’s home.

Estimates suggest that for retailers that sell online and also have physical shops, click-and-collect accounted for 4% of online sales in 2010 with that figure jumping to 17.7% in 2014. Again, the growth of ‘Click and Collect’ puts further strain on the delivery network as specific goods need transporting to specific stores.

Coupled with the huge spike in demand is customer expectation. Consumers now expect their goods to be delivered within a couple of days, not a week.

The UK learnt several lessons the hard way last year with many retailers including Marks & Spencer and Debenhams criticised for not preparing for Christmas shopper demand adequately which put enormous pressure on their delivery operations but equally hit the bottom line and caused substantial reputational damage.

Retailers must make sure they meet and exceed delivery demands during peak periods or consumer confidence will diminish and they have to start all over again in rebuilding those relationships of trust and credibility.

2014 also saw the demise of Coventry-based delivery company City Link after administrators were called in on Christmas Eve, putting further strain on retailers and delivery operators and causing more woe for shoppers sat at home waiting for deliveries.

We are all aware that there is a known shortage of vans in the rental industry so retailers need to be acting now to ensure we do not see a repeat of the retail delivery carnage of 2014.

Not being adequately prepared for the increased online spending, stretched resources and short delivery timescales associated with the festive shopping period means many retailers are running the risk of not having enough vehicles to deal with the Christmas delivery load and simply won’t be able to deliver or will end up paying inflated prices to try and fulfil their needs.

We should also bear in mind how retailers will be looking to up their game this year and generate further revenues than the previous Black Friday or Cyber Monday, and who knows what the likes of retail giants Amazon and eBay have got in store for this year?

What this Christmas e-commerce explosion has created is the need for retailers to have a very slick, sustainable and adaptable delivery operation in place to ensure business efficiency at this crucial time.