When is the best time to schedule international shipments from Canada for maximum efficiency?

When is the best time to schedule international shipments from Canada for maximum efficiency?

The peak shipping season of mid-November to a few weeks after Christmas sees a large increase of parcel deliveries and a concomitant increase of costs. So, by avoiding scheduling international shipments from Canada during this time period, you will maximise shipping efficiency.

But whenever you need to ship internationally, another way to improve your shipping efficiency is by letting Secureship be your shipping broker. Secureship not only saves you mounds of money and tonnes of time when arranging shipments, but this well established Canadian-based company also offers help and advice for all of your shipping needs.

As well, this blog describes other factors that may affect shipping efficiency from Canada: sea freight vs. air freight service; destination – major city versus a small town in the hinterland; distance of travel – New Zealand vs. the USA.

Table of Contents

• Secureship
• Other Efficiencies
• Other Factors to Consider
• Conclusion

Secureship

Shipping efficiency generally means a parcel’s minimal delivery time at a cost affordable to the sender. In the shipping industry, speedier deliveries cost more, so typically budgetary constraints dictate when a recipient receives his or her parcel.

Secureship can play a key role in making your international shipments as efficient as possible. Its bulk purchasing agreements with well known carriers like Purolator, UPS, and FedEx, can save you up to half of a courier’s retail shipping price. And as Secureship’s online system is easy-to-use, it takes only a few minutes for multiple options of carriers, delivery times, and costs to appear on your screen for your shipment.

Once you select an option, you are then guided through the necessary paperwork. Finally, you choose a pick-up time and the carrier comes to your door for the parcel, which alleviates the annoying task of leaving the office and carrying it to the courier’s outlet – and that too improves your efficiency.

Other Efficiencies

Beyond using Secureship’s services, another key strategy to maximise efficiency is to avoid shipping from mid-November until early in the new year – the Christmas season, when volumes and therefore costs balloon.

However, if that is not possible, it is highly advisable that you plan to ship sooner. This is not only a strategy for what is known, but is very wise for those unpredictable unknowns – snow and ice storms, hurricanes and typhoons, labour strikes and manpower shortages.

• Ensuring you have the recipient’s complete and proper address (you should provide your telephone number for easy contact in the event of a parcel issue)
• Track the parcel while it is en route, which Secureship does this on your behalf, and if an issue arises, you can take measures like contacting the recipient
• Provide all necessary documentation, which is more complex for an international shipment compared to a domestically-bound parcel

Other Factors to Consider

There are two other factors that also affect efficiency by slowing down deliveries, but they increase the cost.

Major centre versus a minor centre

Air freight connections to a country’s major cities from Canada are well established and recipients receive their shipments soon after landing. However, if the recipient is in a smaller town or rural community many kilometres away, that will inevitably add time and money to the delivery charges, which lowers shipping efficiency.

Distance to destination

Next to the size and weight of a parcel, the distance it must travel to its destination also affects shipping efficiencies. So when Canadians ship to New Zealand, they will pay a lot more than sending a parcel across the border to the USA. And one way to mitigate costs to a far flung country is to send goods by sea; the downside is delivery time – for a trans-Pacific country that could mean up to a three-month delivery.

Conclusion

The best time to schedule international shipments from Canada for maximum efficiency is outside of the Christmas peak season period – before mid-November and after mid-January. But at any time of the year, efficiency is a trade-off between cost and delivery time, which follow an inverse relationship – lower costs mean longer delivery times.

To help Canadian shippers find that balance, there is Secureship, whose easy-to-use platform quickly provides a shipping estimate that could save you up to 50% of a carrier’s retail price. However, there are two situations in which you may find that delivery times invariably increase and cost you more money: If the destination is an isolated community far away from a large city and when the destination country is further away, which becomes quite apparent when shipping from Canada across the Pacific Ocean.