What is a local courier facility?

The pandemic has accelerated the shift toward a more digital world and triggered changes in online shopping behavior patterns that are likely to have long-term impacts and the changed consumer buying behavior which appears to be here to stay permanently.

While we are all buying more online and tracking our packages, we have come across this term many times when the goods have arrived at the last destination that has mentioned: "arrived at local courier facility."

Let us understand first.

What is a local courier facility? #

A local courier facility is a delivery service that receives and delivers shipments and items from one area to another, usually supplied by a delivery or courier firm or by local businesses such as supermarkets, grocery stores, and many other small businesses in the city. Shipments can arrive at a local courier facility in individual packages or in pallets. If in pallets, it needs to be unpacked into individual packages. The packages are scanned and sorted to match up with the vehicle routes.

Local courier facility is typically offered by small vehicles or mini trucks for service within a local area including surrounding rural locations, resulting in fast and efficient delivery services, usually the same day within city limits.

In a nutshell, at a local courier facility, they provide services to receives, sort and transports goods and other shipments or items within the local areas. Because of the time sensitivity of the delivery, the local courier facility is normally operated on a small scale. It is built with efficiency in mind to handle incoming shipments, sort packages, and package handling procedures optimised for fast, efficient last-lime delivery to the recipient’s address.

As the concept of a Local courier facility is understood and cleared, we should now look into the final stage of the delivery before the goods arrived with us which is "arrived at local courier facility."

What does ‘arrived at local courier facility’ mean? #

Once you place an online order and the same has been confirmed by the seller or the retailer, they will then ship the parcel from the point of production or storage and hand it over to another company who would organise delivery - the courier service. Then the arrival of the parcel will be notified to you as a tracking point either via email, SMS or through an online portal.

"Arrived at a local courier facility" means that the vehicle transporting your product or package has arrived at the processing hub, which is usually a local delivery facility, and that the parcel will be processed in several hours while sorting and segregating items from the collection and moving to the next step, where it is loaded onto vehicles before it is delivered to your place of business or residence.

For example: If you live in Southampton, you will receive notification that the parcel has arrived at the nearest Local courier facility in Southampton, which usually means you will receive the parcel later that day, depending on the volume of the parcel, the time of day it arrived, seasonal variations, and so on, and it will be delivered to your location from there.

In general, once the goods have reached the local courier facility it will normally take around 1-2 days times before it is delivered to the receiver’s door step.

Packages arrived at local courier facility also provide options of picking up the packages from their location depending on the instructions mentioned at the time of order or urgency of the goods to the receiver.

Are you able to redirect packages from one local courier facility to another? #

The sender of the package has no authority to redirect the packages from one local courier facility to another. It is the responsibility of the person or team who handles the day to day running of the local courier facility and their regional processing hub. However, the receiver can request change of delivery address, and if the address is outside the local courier facility area of coverage, then they may redirect it to another local courier facility nearer to the new delivery address. This would normally requires the receiver to contact the sender to redirect it. If approved, the sender would instruct the courier to redirect it.

Where is the local courier facility for retailer like Shein? #

As the world navigates its way out of the pandemic, the trend toward online shopping is growing at a fastest rate, as COVID-19 has fundamentally impacted consumer buying behavior. Shein is one of the companies that experiencing tremendous growth rate. According to BBC news, Shein has over 600,000 product for sale on their online platform at any one time and generating sales close to £7.4 billion in 2020.

Shein sell worldwide, selling in over 90 countries. One would think local courier facility play a critical part in their operation. That is not the case. Their main operation where goods from the manufacturing facility to packaging of the goods are in China. When order is placed by customers, and processed by Shein, the packages are shipped worldwide, where they handover to their local couriers or local postal network. From there it will be transported worldwide into various countries and distributed to local courier facility for delivery to their customers.

Are there any processing facility like a local courier facility? #

Fulfilment centre and freight forwarding company tend to operate theor facilities similar to a local courier facility. The process in place may not be identical, but the processing of incoming and outgoing packages are fundamentally similar. One of the forwarding companies like ForwardVia.com, which has a local facility that accept packages from businesses and UK stores or retailers. It does not deliver to local addresses but provide a UK address for international shoppers to buy from UK retailers and they arrange to ship it worldwide.