The Challenge of Sending Ugly Freight to Residential Addresses

For the past two years, as one of the Directors of Venture Banners, my main job has not been business development, or new product expansion, no… it's been arguing with courier companies.

The main issue starts with the type of freight we send out. In the industry, what we produce and send is known as 'ugly freight' or 'non-conveyable freight'. It simply isn't the nice, neat, shoe box size packages that every courier craves.

Ten years ago, we had several couriers to choose from for non-conveyable freight and TNT was undoubtedly the best. But TNT were taken over in 2016 by the company that left Tom Hanks on a remote island with nothing but a volleyball for company, and as the two companies merged and the TNT brand faded away, FedEx gradually withdrew from the non-conveyable market as well.

Then in 2023, Tuffnells, a large player in the non-con market, went bust and that left just one company handling all of the ugly packages: DX.

Enter DX

We've now used DX for six years and they must hate us as a customer, because I question absolutely everything.

I spent over a year arguing with DX over their volumetric charges. A volumetric charge is when you measure a package H x W x D and divide by 5000 to give you its volumetric weight. When I tell you the volumetric weight of a 4kg sheet of 8x4ft Fluted Board is charged at 62kg and anything over 50kg is then charged at a pallet rate, you'll understand how unimpressed I was!

Added to which, most of their staff either don't know how to calculate it correctly—or most likely—just guess it.

Completely Unreasonable

For a while recently it just seemed like couriers in general were inventing more and more exciting ways to charge more for the same service. In January this year, I started to notice a significant increase in costs that following some digging could only be put down to the residential address charge.

It basically means that if DX deliver to a residential house rather than a commercial property, an additional £12.40 applies to the consignment charge. Not a minimum £12.40 cost for the consignment - an extra £12.40 on top of all the regular fees, no matter what those fees might equate to. 

But there was more. In DX's terms of business, it stated that in addition to the £12.40 residential address charge, DX would have no liability for any damage sustained to a package that was delivered to a house.

The residential address charge accounted for an additional eight thousand pounds for us over a three month period at the start of 2024. This isn't something I could ignore.

"It's outrageous!", I said out loud… or is it?

Perhaps Somewhat Reasonable?

DX are THE ugly freight couriers, that's what they're geared up for, that's what they do best. Their fleet is not made up of vans but consists of 7.5 tonners and articulated trucks. And when you think about it logically, it makes little sense for their drivers to be weaving their enormous trucks down Acacia Avenue, dodging parked cars trying to locate 13a only to find that Mrs Miggins is out. They don't want that grief, they want to be pulling into a nice spacious industrial estate and delivering to several businesses at once.

For our customers, we are trying to mitigate the impact of this. We've started using FedEx again for all of our smaller packages: Roller Banners, smaller PVC banners and the like.

We are also working to create new packaging for other products like flags and stretch walls so it can be accepted as 'conveyable' by FedEx to further reduce the spectre of the residential charge.

I am sure I don't like the residential charge any more than you do, but as a businessman, I can understand why DX has implemented it. What all of us need to do going forward is to make sure that we mitigate the residential charges impact on our businesses and customers' businesses where we can, because despite my arguments and animosity towards it, it looks like it's here to stay.