Top Tips to Ensure Your Packages Arrive Safely and On Time
If you have ever bought or sold anything online, or sent items to friends or family, then you’ll know how important it is to get the packaging right. When you send packages, you certainly want to do all you can to ensure they arrive in one piece and on time. You have plenty of different means and methods of achieving this feat – whether you are sending the items for business or personal reasons. So, let’s look into a few top tips that can help ensure that everything goes as smoothly as you would like.
Use Secure Packaging
Before you even contact the courier firms, the first step you need to take is to ensure that you are using packaging that is less likely to get damaged in transit. So, you should certainly not skimp on the packaging – particularly if what you are sending is valuable. At the same time, it also needs to be the right size. Too big, and the items could end up knocking around in the van and potentially break. Too small and the items will not get covered properly and equally can get damaged in this manner. You are also going to need to make sure that you get any supplementary packaging right as well. For example, you will need any interior protective material like bubble wrap and good-quality tape to secure it together. After all, there is no point in shelling out for expensive packaging for the tape to be the thing that lets you down in the end.
Properly Attach the Labels
As well as the packaging itself, there also needs to be some effort put into ensuring that the labels are all properly attached. Otherwise, they could end up peeling off during transit, and your package could end up getting delayed, or it may not arrive altogether. This is particularly important in an age when many people are printing their own labels at home. If you happen to be writing out the address for any reason at all, it is certainly going to be worth putting in the additional time and effort to ensure that the handwriting is neat and can clearly be read. Otherwise, it could all easily end up with one of the neighbors – or another place entirely.
Choose the Right Shipping Partner
Beyond all the packing steps you can take in your own home, you also need to choose a shipping partner you can trust to get the package from A to B successfully. You may know and rely upon the major carriers out there, but some are bound to have better success rates than others. If you are planning on going for a local firm, it is certainly worth putting in the additional bit of effort to make sure that they have the type of reputation that you can rely upon.
Pick the Right Shipping Option
Apart from actually choosing the shipping firm with the required time and attention, another useful step to take is making sure that you pick the right shipping option in the first place. For example, you may want to send something with registered and signed for delivery if it happens to be particularly valuable. On the other hand, if you have larger items to send, it could be that you send items by freight instead. If you want to be sure of the package arriving, it could be worth shelling out that bit of extra money to make sure that it happens successfully by investing in freight shipping.
Check You Aren’t Sending Anything Prohibited
While you can take all the packing measures that you like and take all the time in the world to choose the right shipping company, if you try to send anything that it prohibited, there is every chance that it is not going to reach its final destination in the long run. This is especially true if you are sending items across borders. With this in mind, it is certainly worth having more than a glance as the rules and regulations out there. If not, you could end up in a situation in which you are sorely disappointed.
Fill Out the Right Documentation
Sometimes, you are going to have to fill out additional documentation to ensure that your items arrive as you want them and on time. Again, this can often come down to anything that you are sending from one country to another. As a side note, you should also ensure that you have paid the right shipping costs and got any stamps that you need. This is what is likely to lead to some holdups if you are not careful – and these are the type of irritating delays that could have otherwise been avoided.
Track Your Package
More and more in the modern world you are going to have the opportunity to track your packages online, and this is certainly a step that is worth taking as it can help to give you the peace of mind that you desire – reinforcing the knowledge that your packages are on the right track at all times. If it looks like there are going to be any delays along the way, you can then learn about them all sooner rather than later.
Take Out Insurance Coverage
You should also make sure that you take out the necessary insurance coverage, as even if you have taken all the preliminary steps, there are still things that can go wrong along the way. Ultimately, this simply gives you that additional protection and peace of mind that you are looking for.
All of these are amongst the different steps that can seriously help out when it comes to making sure that your packages arrive safely and on time. Ultimately, all of them are worth practicing and can add up to having the type of big impact that you are looking for – one that proves to be worthwhile in such a wide variety of ways.
