Palletline has launched a city freight consolidation centre service, branded City 24, for its members to offer to their customers.
The initiative is based on Palletline member Foulger Transport's consolidation centre contract with Norfolk County Council, which started in summer 2007. However, Palletline has not designed City 24 to operate on so formal a basis. MD Kevin Buchanan explains: "We're doing a mail-shot to local authorities [to promote City 24], saying you don't have to go into a tendered, single-source provision that you have to manage."
Palletline members will also be able to pitch the service (comprising stockholding for seasonal demand, break-bulk, pick-and-pack, pre-retail and dealing with dry packaging waste) directly to private sector customers as well.
"We haven't nailed down pricing yet," says Buchanan. "Given that a PCN is £60, I would have thought an evening delivery should carry a surcharge of £30 or something like that. It will probably be a two-band pricing structure: before and after midnight. Early on I would imagine the majority of volume would be between 7pm and 11pm."
In the short-term, Buchanan expects the network's London members to benefit the most, closely followed by members responsible for "the older cities not built for traffic: York, Winchester and Edinburgh". Members covering Birmingham and Manchester should also benefit.
He adds: "City 24 is an industry-leading innovation that also makes excellent practical and commercial sense, ticking all the right boxes in terms of reducing congestion, noise and environmental pollution." Also, Buchanan expects another four or five new members to join the Palletline network in Q1 2009. Already confirmed is European logistics giant DB Schenker, covering the east London and Essex postcodes.