Next day delivery?

20 October 2015

Wanting to understand more about the user experience of the Strategic Road Network, we have been getting out and about. Now visited DHL, Sainsbury’s and Royal Mail depots plus, more recently, DPD parcels in Birmingham.

All of these operations seems to have very similar characteristics. Very customer-focussed, which is quite refreshing after dealing with some public transport operations. They are working in a competitive environment, always seem to be looking at ways of reducing costs and they employ some very positive, can-do staff.

What do they want from the roads? Again, seems to be a simple message: just tell us what the state of the roads are (in other words roadworks, accidents and hold ups) and we will work round it. 50 mph? Fine, just as long as we know. It seems they are relatively undemanding of the road network as long as they know the conditions – maybe it’s just years of accepting it as it is.

Managed to get a ride in a cab of an articulated DPD truck. Very different view of the road – literally. You cannot speed up and down so quickly, momentum is all and overtaking not that easy. We will find out more about truck drivers’ views on improvements to the Strategic Road Network when we publish the second part of our work in this area (research is still being carried out). See the first part (car and van drivers’ priorities for improvement) here: http://bit.ly/roaduser-priorities

The views of truck drivers maybe haven’t been heard enough in some debates. Looking forward to doing more work in this area.

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