Local guides · Post 26
The winter delivery round a Ceredigion merchant runs by phone
For fuel, log and feed merchants in Ceredigion: what the phone-and-memory winter round costs you each week, and how one written sheet changes it.
By November the phone in the yard does not stop. A customer in Tregaron wants two tonnes of logs before the cold snap, and someone near Aberaeron needs feed for the week. Then a call from Lampeter asks for coal on Friday, while you are halfway through loading.
The round then gets built from memory. Cardigan first because it is on the way out, then Newcastle Emlyn, with Tregaron later in the day. It usually works. In a bad week an order promised for Tuesday is remembered on Thursday, and that means a second trip and an awkward call. By the end of January the pad has been rewritten a few times, and the only record of what was promised is your memory of the call.
The list and the route are two different jobs. One can be written down and kept. The other belongs to the person driving.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
Take a winter week of around 40 orders. Assumptions, plainly: 40 orders, four minutes of phone and note for each, and an hourly rate of £30. Your figures will differ, so treat this as a sketch.
- 40 orders × 4 minutes = 160 minutes, about 2.7 hours
- Re-checking the notes and calling back to confirm = about 1.5 hours
- Total = about 4 hours a week
- 4 hours × £30 an hour = £120 a week
- × 20 winter weeks = £2,400 across the season
None of that is the delivery itself. It is the remembering and the writing around it. The round is not the problem. The admin around the round is.
Score it: the three checks
- Hours. The phone, the notes and the re-planning add up to most of a morning each week. That clears the bar on its own.
- Repeat. One written page can hold it: name, place, what was ordered, how much, which day. A new starter could load the van from that page.
- Risk-if-wrong. A missing drop of logs in January is a cold customer and a second journey. A confirmation sent with the wrong price is worse. That is why a person approves every one.
Try one thing this week (free)
Write the order sheet this week, by hand if that is easier. One line per order with the name, the place, the product, the amount and the day. Read it back to the customer before you hang up. By Friday you can judge one thing: could someone else load the van from that sheet without asking you a question.
Where a person stays
Software prepares the order sheet and writes the confirmation message. The route stays with the driver, because the driver knows the lane that floods and the customer who is out at market. A named person reads every confirmation before it goes, and that person owns the decision to send it or to hold it back. Financial work, credit terms and anything with a legal edge stay approval-only, always. Nothing leaves unchecked.
FAQ
No. The phone stays exactly as it is. The order simply lands on a sheet that everyone can read.
The driver. Software can group the orders by place and suggest an order of drops, but the person who knows the roads makes the final call.
It goes back on the sheet and a person approves a fresh confirmation before anything is sent.
Yes. That is the easiest part, since the details barely change. A person still approves the message before it goes out.
The £499 diagnostic. One fixed fee: a one-hour call, a written report, and a follow-up call ranking what to hand over first. 5 hours a week found or a full refund, and the whole fee credits against any build.