Fulfilment & Carriage Control
The Problem
Delivery cost is one of the biggest — and most ignored — profit levers in ecommerce.
As order volumes grow, carriage costs quietly erode margin. Rate cards become outdated. Surcharges creep in. Service levels vary by carrier and destination. Claims and failed deliveries increase. Yet ownership of delivery cost is often unclear, sitting somewhere between operations, finance, and customer service.
Many businesses default to a single carrier or legacy setup that no longer reflects their product mix, order profile, or customer promise. Cheaper orders get over-serviced. Large or fragile orders incur unexpected surcharges. Returns and failed deliveries distort true cost per order.
The operational impact is visible — delays, customer complaints, claims.
The commercial impact is quieter but more damaging: margin leakage on every order, rising cost per shipment, and delivery becoming more expensive the more you grow.
Without active fulfilment and carriage control, scale makes delivery less profitable, not more.
OUR solution
We treat fulfilment and carriage as a commercial system, not an operational afterthought.
We help you design, negotiate, and manage the right mix of carriers for your product profile, volumes, and service promise — across parcel, pallet, oversized, and specialist delivery.
Using our network of trusted carrier partners and fulfilment providers, we build carriage strategies that balance:
- cost per order
- delivery reliability
- customer experience
- operational practicality
This isn’t about chasing the cheapest headline rate.
It’s about building a delivery setup that works in the real world, holds under volume, and protects contribution margin as you scale.
Scope of work.
As your embedded fulfilment and carriage control function, we take responsibility for the commercial and operational performance of your delivery setup, including:
- Carrier strategy design based on product size, weight, value, and fragility
- Selection and onboarding of parcel, pallet, and specialist carriers
- Rate card review, negotiation, and benchmarking
- Analysis and mitigation of surcharges (fuel, oversize, remote area, etc.)
- Definition of service levels aligned to your brand promise
- Multi-carrier routing logic to balance cost and performance
- Integration of carriers into order management systems (e.g. Linnworks)
- Label generation, tracking, and despatch confirmation workflows
- Claims management and dispute support
- Ongoing performance monitoring (cost, delivery times, failure rates)
- Regular review as volumes, channels, and product mix evolve
- Where required, we also support:
- Introduction to vetted fulfilment centres and pick & pack partners
- Commercial comparison of fulfilment pricing models
- Operational onboarding and system integration
- Alignment of fulfilment operations with carriage strategy
The objective is simple:
lower cost per order, reliable delivery performance, and margin you can trust.
INSIGHT
Seeing the True Cost of Delivery, Not the Headline Rate
Most ecommerce businesses think they know what delivery costs them.
Very few actually do.
Headline carrier rates rarely reflect reality. Fuel surcharges, oversize penalties, remote area fees, failed delivery costs, claims, and returns all distort the true picture. Different products behave very differently in transit — yet are often costed the same way.
Without a clear, granular view, delivery decisions are made on assumptions:
- legacy carrier choices
- historic rate cards
- averages that hide problem orders
We help you build a true view of delivery economics, including:
- real cost per order by SKU, size, weight, and channel
- carrier performance by service, destination, and order type
- where delivery is quietly eroding contribution margin
This insight allows delivery decisions to be made commercially, not habitually.
Delivery stops being a black box.
It becomes a cost you can actively manage.
STRATEGY
Designing the Right Carrier Mix for How You Actually Trade
There is no “best” carrier — only the right carrier for a specific job.
We design a carriage strategy that reflects how your business really operates: your product dimensions, order profiles, delivery promises, customer expectations, and failure tolerance.
That means:
- using different carriers and services where they make commercial sense
- avoiding over-servicing low-risk orders
- protecting high-value or high-risk deliveries
- aligning service level with margin, not convenience
Carrier rules are defined clearly and enforced through systems. Orders are routed intelligently based on size, weight, destination, and service promise — not defaulted to a single option.
Performance is reviewed continuously, not annually.
The result is a carrier setup that is deliberate, defensible, and commercially aligned — rather than accidental or inherited.
EXECUTION
Fulfilment & Delivery That Scales Without Margin Leakage
As order volume increases, small inefficiencies compound fast.
Packaging choices, pick accuracy, carrier selection, exception handling, and claims management all begin to matter more — not less — at scale. Without discipline, delivery cost per order rises quietly as sales grow.
We focus on execution that removes friction from fulfilment and delivery workflows:
- packaging logic aligned to carrier thresholds
- clean handoff between fulfilment and carriers
- reduced failed deliveries and claims
- consistent despatch performance
Because fulfilment and carriage are integrated with your wider operational setup, improvements reinforce each other rather than conflict with systems, stock flow, or channel activity.
The outcome is fulfilment that grows with the business — without delivery becoming a hidden tax on success.
Delivery and fulfilment are where your customer actually experiences your brand
– Sales Forge