Practical guide
Share the truck, keep the customer: a branch manager’s guide to evaluating shared delivery
A shared truck can carry orders from several suppliers to one site. For a branch, whether the load fits is only part of the question: what happens along the way to the customer relationship, the branch’s commercial information and its service record matters as much. Evaluate any shared delivery arrangement on those terms before an order goes on the truck.
This is practical advice for supplier branches evaluating any shared delivery arrangement.
Commercial delivery booking is not open through this website. BuildQuick is in development and preparing a planned pilot.
Define who controls the customer.
Start with the commercial relationship, not the truck. Write down who sets the material prices, who accepts or declines each order, who invoices the customer and who handles a return or a credit. If the answer to any of these is not your branch, ask why, and what it would change for your customer.
Then follow one order from end to end: from your counter, through the pickup and the shared journey, to the arrival on site, the proof of delivery and the invoice. At each step, note who sees the order, who speaks to the customer and whose name the customer sees.
Inspect the information boundaries.
A shared load puts several suppliers’ orders into one plan. Ask to see what each party would see: your branch, the other suppliers on the same truck, the driver and the customer on site. Another supplier should not see your prices, your customers or your order history.
Ask how access is restricted, recorded and removed when staff leave. Ask what a customer-facing tracking link reveals and whether it exposes unrelated pickups.
Request the data-retention and incident-response policies. A retention policy says how long order and delivery information is kept and how it is deleted. An incident-response policy says what happens, and who is told, if information reaches someone it should not.
If the role screens you are shown are illustrations or plans, treat them as planned controls until they are implemented and checked, not as a guarantee of privacy.
Test readiness and exception handling.
A shared truck depends on every order on it. Test the arrangement with situations from your own branch: an order that is not ready at the planned pickup time, a load that cannot travel with the others, a site that cannot receive at the agreed time, and an item found short or damaged on arrival.
For each situation, ask who notices the problem, who decides what happens next, who tells your customer and how the change is recorded. A delay caused by another supplier’s order should not count against your branch.
Request a named operational contact, a clear approval path and a written record of the decision.
Evaluate flexible windows with your customer.
Combining loads can mean asking your customer to accept a wider arrival window. Agree it with the customer before it is offered: if the crew on site cannot use a wider window, the waiting moves from the truck to the site.
Do not promise a saving in advance. A saving exists only when the actual quote for that delivery confirms it, compared like with like: the same load, destination, handling and window.
Agree how a trial will be judged.
Before any trial starts, agree what will be measured and how. Define an on-time arrival, a complete delivery and an exception in words both sides accept, and keep the definitions fixed while the trial runs.
Record the cause of every late or failed delivery: the delivery provider, a supplier or the site. A supplier should not be measured on a delay it did not cause.
Report the number of deliveries behind every percentage. A percentage without its count cannot be judged.
Before you compare, record what your own deliveries cost today and how often they run late. Your own records are the baseline.
Questions to ask any delivery provider.
- Who sets the material prices, invoices the customer and handles returns?
- What can another supplier, the driver and the customer on site see of my order?
- How is access restricted, recorded and removed when staff leave?
- What does a customer-facing tracking link reveal, and does it expose unrelated pickups?
- Who decides, and who tells my customer, when an order is not ready or a delivery fails?
- How will a trial be judged, and who records the cause of each late delivery?
Ask for the answers in writing, with the data-retention and incident-response policies, a named operational contact and the approval path. The printable checklist lists every point in this guide, with a notes line under each group to write the answers on.
Where BuildQuick fits.
In the proposed model, you set your material prices and invoice your customer. BuildQuick charges for delivery and agreed platform services.
Your branch owns the material-sale conversation: product selection, material pricing and invoicing.
Before pilot work begins, the parties must agree who confirms readiness, who loads and unloads, and how a missed window, a damaged item or a changed requirement is handled.
What you can do now.
Enquiries are not open yet — here is what you can do now.
Sources
Every statement about BuildQuick in this guide is taken word for word from these pages of this website.