subject: What Can I Expect The Courier Company To Provide For My Shipment? [print this page] Courier companies provide a number of different services. They will deliver your packages for you. They will often offer warehousing and distribution services and, in many cases, they will even offer speciality services like logistics consulting. However, one area of business that not many courier companies involve themselves in is the provision of packing materials. If you do business with an Alabama courier company, you will likely find that getting packing materials is going to be chiefly your responsibility, not theirs.
Providing packing materials to their clients is not something which generally has much upside for a courier company. The result of offering a service like this would be a loss of packing space in their vehicles, and a slowdown of their entire delivery service. Every time a driver had to take time to deliver packing materials, it would slow down the entire delivery speed for every shipment they had to drop off on their route. Couriers can't generally afford to tolerate a drop off in service like that in order to just provide packing materials to a few customers.
There are exceptions to this general rules though, and it never hurts to ask a courier company what their practices are regarding providing packing supplies. Sometimes couriers see this as a branding opportunity. Some companies will have document envelopes and boxes which they provide with their branding on it in order to increase awareness of their firm.
Larger courier companies also tend to offer something in the way of courier supplies, especially if they have a full scale trucking division. In that case, items like pallets, bands, ropes, and other supplies used for moving larger goods. There are also cases where a courier company might offer a white glove service, where they will totally pack and unpack anything that they are shipping. These types of services tend to include packing supplies, while regular services do not.
Even if a courier company does not provide packing supplies at no cost, there is a chance that they might sell them to you. Some couriers have seen this as a profitable supplement to their existing business and offer their customers the option to buy all their packing supplies direct from the courier. In this situation, the courier company may be willing to deliver the supplies to you, or you may have to pick them up from the depot, depending on the company.
