If you're running an e-commerce business, a lot of your time, effort, and money goes into shipping. You may or may not be aware of how large a portion of the cost of shipping goes to last-mile delivery. Western Peaks Logistics is constantly tweaking and refining our last-mile delivery services so that we can offer our customers the fastest delivery at the lowest prices possible in Salt Lake City and throughout the Rocky Mountain West.
Logistics is a fascinating — but complex — business. Every day is a race to the finish line, and it's WPL's goal to get there first — every time.
Challenges of Last-Mile Deliveries
Last-mile delivery is often the most difficult part of any package's journey. It's easy and quick to ship packages from one big city to another — it's the last leg of the trip to the destination that requires more effort.
For example, if you want to travel to Kenosha, Wisconsin, it would be fairly easy to find a flight to Minneapolis — you would likely have your choice of airlines as well times of day. But once you get to Minneapolis, Kenosha is still an hour away. You would then need to rent a car or take a cab, both of which may cost almost as much as your plane ticket.
It's a similar situation with packages and freight. It's easy to put packages on a plane or truck heading for Salt Lake City, Denver, or Boise. But delivering to the surrounding areas, which are almost certainly more far-flung, is more challenging.
Terrain and Familiarity
Here in the Rocky Mountain and Intermountain West, the driving can be more challenging than in other parts of the country, such as the Southwest and the Southeast where the roads are flatter and it hardly ever snows.
Thus, it helps a great deal to work with drivers who are familiar with the Rocky Mountain terrain and the area for last-mile deliveries. It makes the process much smoother and faster if your driver knows where the low bridges are, which roads might be impassible in winter snows or spring thaws, and how to find the most rural addresses in Utah, Colorado, and Idaho.
One of the most important ingredients in the recipe for success in logistics is experience. WPL — a logistics company formed by uniting several reputable regional logistics companies — has decades of combined experience, which helps us anticipate problems before they arise and plan ways to overcome them.
Logistics Planning Tools
We use sophisticated software to help us plan our drivers' routes. This software determines the most efficient groupings of deliveries and assigns them to the best driver for that route. Because many of the goods that consumers order are of low value and because these consumers expect free shipping from the vendor, it's important that the logistics company make every effort to bring down the cost of last-mile delivery any way they can.
Western Peaks Logistics has a wealth of experience finding new and innovative ways to make shipping faster and cheaper. Contact us today to find out more about last-mile deliveries and rates.