📦 Behind The Scenes: Delivering a Packfleet Parcel

One of the most important parts of the Packfleet process is the delivery itself — this is where the confluence of operations and technology needs to really shine, so that the parcel gets delivered to the right place, at the right time, with the right instructions, and the recipient knows exactly what’s happened.

So we thought we’d take you behind the scenes and show exactly what it’s like for our drivers delivering out on the road!

Step 1: Arrival

The Packfleet driver app is the source of truth for everything here; it tells our drivers where to go and what to do. For every delivery, the app will open their navigation app of choice, whether that’s Google Maps or Waze, and direct them right to the door. Importantly, on our backend, we use a number of different sources to get the best possible data on exactly where the address is without relying on Google Maps being up to date itself, with the aim that our driver doesn’t need to spend any time looking for the address manually.

Step 2: Getting the parcel

Once they arrive, they’ll hop out and identify the parcel in their van. Parcels are loaded into vans in the morning based on their geographic location, so most of the time the next parcel should be easily accessible for our driver. They then use the Packfleet app to scan the parcel and confirm it’s the correct one, so that if we’re doing lots of deliveries on the same street, there’s no chance of getting them mixed up!

Step 3: Delivering

The app will then tell them any special instructions; recipients can tell us safe places they want us to leave parcels or give specific instructions on how to open a gate, so there’s often useful info at this point. It might even tell our driver not to knock on the door, but call their phone number instead using our “Don’t Knock, Call” feature. Once they’ve taken those into account and delivered the parcel successfully, either directly to the recipient or to the safe place or neighbour, they take a photo to confirm delivery.

At this point, we also store the exact location of the delivery so we can ensure it’s correct on our backend. Our driver can add any notes they want to (like “I’ve left the parcel hidden in your porch as requested”) and then we notify the recipient by email or SMS of exactly where their parcel is.

And that’s it for the driver! The app will automatically progress to their next stop and in the background, our systems will update with their delivery time and details and make any changes necessary for future deliveries. Everything is stored so we can look at our data over time to make improvements to this process and we share the delivery details with our merchants so they can confirm their parcels arrived safe and sound.

To find out more about all of the benefits of using Packfleet, head to Packfleet.com and have a look around!