Mate, where's the freight?

What?

This campfire chat is simply an update on the current state of product shipping and delivery. The unfortunate thing is, we are all seeing an impact from the whole 'COVID19 thing' in the form of freight delays right now. The shipping or despatch side of things is ok, we are able to get most orders out within 24-48hrs. It's the freight and actual delivery that is letting us down a bit.

Where?

Depending where we are shipping from and where you live, the results are pretty variable. When we are able to ship from a warehouse within the same country as a buyer, we've been seeing freight delays of just 3-5 days in most cases. Not bad. International deliveries have been anything from 2-6 weeks, depending on the origin & destination countries. Not so good.

Why?

It seems there's a few contributing causes. The first is staff involved in any aspect of physical handling of packages are being asked to isolate. So less people in a work area, changes to procedures etc. Another ironic factor is that we have so many people not leaving their homes, they are doing more online shopping and of course the demands on the freight and handling system has increased. Then there's the huge global reduction in flights. In the pre-COVID19 world there were hundreds and even thousands of flights every day, now we have something like 3% of them operating. 

But wait, don't the freight companies (UPS, DHL, FedEx etc) and a bunch of airlines all have their own dedicated freight aircraft?

Well, that's a great question and yes indeed they do. And those aircraft are still flying at max capacity. But when the worlds airlines operate passenger aircraft they carry freight on nearly every flight. Underneath the passenger cabin, down with your checked in bags of dirty laundry and souvenirs - there's usually tons of freight too. But not at the moment, no passenger flights =  a big reduction in freight getting moved around the world.

That's just great mate, late freight! :-(

For now, yes. No other way to say it. Not in all cases but certainly for some. We are doing our best to get larger amounts of stock to distribution points that are close to areas of demand, so we can ship local as often as possible.

On a more positive note, we have recently started using Sendle for more of our shipping from/within Australia. They are Australia's first 100% carbon neutral shipping service - which we are very happy to support. 

Here's hoping things get back to something like the 'old normal' again soon. In the meantime, stay home if you can and stay safe.

Until next campfire - Gary