Yodel achieves a successful peak performance delivering over 14 million parcels in the weeks before Christmas
Yodel, the UK’s leading parcel carrier, handled over 14 million parcels* in the run up to Christmas this year.
Dick Stead, executive chairman of Yodel, commented: "We have worked closer than ever with our clients this year, resulting in our best peak performance to date. We successfully handled over 14 million parcels in just 24 days, sorting over 860,000 parcels on our busiest day".
Yodel invested heavily in planning for Christmas, moving to seven day a week deliveries throughout December and opened an additional 13 sites to cope with the increase in parcels, as well as taking on thousands of additional workers to handle sorting, deliveries and customer service.
The carrier worked closely with its clients on their forecasted daily parcel volumes, planning and trailer segregation by service to increase efficiency and sent out daily performance and weather updates to keep retailers informed of any potential issues before they occurred.
Yodel revealed that Christmas deliveries showed some interesting consumer trends in 2013, particularly in the number of click and collect orders which more than doubled year on year. Click and collect allows shoppers to order online and, pick up their items from one of the retailers' own stores or at one of over 5,500 locations offered through Yodel's joint venture, CollectPlus.
Thousands who couldn't be with their loved ones this Christmas chose to say it with flowers and the carrier delivered over 52,000 bouquets on the 23 and 24 December alone.
Yodel's figures also showed that parcel volumes increased a week later than the previous year, particularly in London and the South, giving retailers and the UK parcel carriers a real challenge to process and deliver even more orders in a shorter space of time than ever before.
The weather also presented some localised challenges with flooding and motorway closures but Yodel had invested heavily in detailed planning and a central control tower to oversee volume and operational management and weather contingency plans, which ensured that disruption was kept to a minimum.
On the continued stormy forecast, Dick Stead commented; "We continue to monitor the weather closely and our contingencies will remain in place to ensure the safe and timely delivery of parcels throughout the winter."
He added; "Feedback from our clients has been extremely positive and we are delighted that our partnership approach has worked so well."
* The above volume figures are based on deliveries and collections made between 1st December and 24th December 2013.