subject: Any Goods Can Get Priority Treatment With An Express Delivery Service [print this page] If a traveller who wants to travel from A to B is given the choice of using a train which links the two places, but also stops at places C, D, E and F along the way, or one which will get them straight to B with no stops in between, it's very likely that they will plump for the one that takes the least time.
On the other hand, there is still healthy demand for the service which calls at the intermediate stops, as the people who use those are grateful to have a train which they can rely on.
The same principle applies to parcel delivery. Many delivery businesses offer a service which will give a collection at a set time, before the goods are taken to a central sorting or distribution office, from where they are redirected onto another truck or van which will then carry out the second leg of the journey, possibly even taking it direct to its destination from there, or, more likely, making several more stops along the way.
For those who need a more urgent service, however, an express delivery service is designed so that it passes through as few of these intermediate stages as possible, and could even make its entire journey without having to go through a central sorting point.
Of course, the main benefit to this is that the consignment is likely to reach its destination by the most direct route, which, with the absence of intermediate stops, is also likely to be the quickest.
But for delivery companies, offering such a service is very labour and resources-intensive. It effectively means that a driver and vehicle can only carry out one delivery at a time. And for this very simple reason, such a service costs considerably more than using the same company's standard delivery option.
Nevertheless, the principle of 'fast' and 'slow' delivery routes is still used by many firms offering such services. They will run vans, trains or even aircraft which only stop at the main places along their route, alongside others which will call at the intermediate collection points.
Both will carry out their work equally reliably, but the faster service is designed for a customer who needs their items delivered to a particular schedule, and who, in return, is prepared to pay a premium price to get the assurance of that quicker journey time. The 'second class' service will be just as likely to get its consignments delivered safely to their destinations, but is suitable for clients who have either budget constraints, or for whom the speed of their delivery is not critical.
