subject: Can I Schedule A Shipment With Multiple Stops? [print this page] Using a Houston same day delivery service to simply ship your packages one by one to your clients is not the only way to set up a distribution network. There are many ways that people choose to organize and schedule deliveries. One method that some companies like to use is a multi stop shipment to complete their entire days shipping in a single vehicle. However, many people are unclear about how to set this up, or whether or not this is a service that their courier company is going to offer them.
If you want to schedule a multi stop shipment, you will have to see if your courier company has one of the many options that allow this to be set up. The best way to easily get a multi stop shipment is to arrange for a kind of shipping where your packages are going to be the only ones that the courier vehicle is carrying. When you do this, you have much more flexibility than you would if you were shipping LTL or in a parcel van that was carrying packages from several different clients.
The first example of this is when you can hire a dedicated courier from your courier company. This is when you actually subcontract a driver and a vehicle to work solely for your company. This is a practical option for those who have consistent local deliveries throughout the day. In this situation, it is easy to schedule a multi stop shipment, because you are free to structure your deliveries in any way that works best for you.
If you're dealing with larger amounts of cargo, then FTL shipping is a great way to create a multi stop shipment. FTL stands for full truck load, and refers to the shipping setup where a company assigns one truck to one company's shipments. With no goods from other clients in the truck as there would be in an LTL setup, it is much easier for the courier to arrange a multi stop shipment.
There are still other situations where you can get a multi stop shipment, including some where the courier company is going to carry more than just your goods with the delivery. The only problem in this situation is that there can be delays between each of your shipments, as other stops are going to be figured into the route that don't affect you.
