Yodel releases winter delivery plans

Parcel delivery company Yodel has unveiled its contingency plans for this winter.

The company has again invested heavily in detailed planning for 2013.  The parcel carrier has a dedicated team planning and managing the delivery during the ‘peak’ period and has established a control tower at its Wednesbury sort centre, overseeing volume management, operational action and weather contingency plans.

The carrier will be opening an additional 13 sites to handle the forecasted increase in parcel volumes, including seven satellite sites, five standalone service centres and a returns centre in the Midlands.

Recruitment of temporary workers began in September to ensure extended training, boosting Yodel’s overall workforce to 16,000.

A day time sort will be introduced at sort centres, and deliveries will also be increased to seven days a week in order to cope with the additional parcel volumes throughout December.

Clients will be kept updated with daily performance levels and three-day weather forecasts to help keep them and their customers updated of potential issues.

Each service and sort centre, as well as all Yodel holding facilities will be equipped with a minimum stock level of rock salt, snow shovels, ice melt, de-icer and scrapers. In addition the company also has snow ploughs in order to keep the yards at its sort centres free from snow.

In case of heavy snow, Yodel has contingency in place for additional storage facilities at key locations around the country. All service centres will be able to hold up to two days capacity locally and once this is full the company has a national holding facility for parcels and access to additional warehousing. All parcels will be date stamped to ensure a controlled First In First Out (FIFO) process.

Dick Stead, chairman of Yodel, commented: "Christmas is vitally important to our clients and their customers. This cannot be underestimated and our planning for this year’s peak period began in January.

"We maintain a close partnership with our clients throughout the year and their accurate forecasting has enabled us to fine-tune our operation to ensure that we have the correct resource and are able to react quickly to spikes in parcel volume.

"As always we have planned for a harsh British winter and we are confident that we have developed contingencies to ensure that our service remains smooth whatever the weather."