Peak shipping season is unavoidable, and thus, businesses and people need to be wiser to curve shipment delays. Without understanding peak season, you’ll struggle with the uncertainties that will affect your finances and time.
If you’re a business owner or delivery courier preparing to earn during peak season, don’t be discouraged. Follow these tips to maximize how to efficiently plan ahead of time.
Why Business and Delivery Services Should Know About Peak Season?
Peak shipping season is caused when consumer purchases are high during a specific time of the year. This strong demand impacts supplies and shipping activity. When you’re unprepared, this can negatively affect business operations.
During this period, it’s important for manufacturers and retailers to analyze which items are their best sellers. So that they can keep up with the high volume of orders, ensure the flow of inventories, and keep their customers happy. Preparation should also go to truck rental or shipping services. That way, the flow of the delivery schedule is targeted.
Peak shipping season in the Philippines
Peak season is an exciting event of the year that can increase your income. This insight can give businesses and shipping services ideas about which seasons must be prepared.
Chinese New Year: January to Early February
Chinese New Year is one of the most awaited celebrations in the Philippines, primarily due to the significant influence of Chinese culture and Filipino-Chinese residing in the Philippines. The cultural impact can be felt with festival lanterns displayed outside establishments and dragon dances on the rich Filipino-Chinese streets.
During the Chinese New Year, Chinese business owners of big malls are giving discounts as a way to share their celebrations with the community. They sell varieties of round fruits and sticky foods that are believed to bring people a prosperous year. Lastly, they also light up the sky with a fireworks show.
These activities affect shipping services, and this can be difficult to manage without booking your shipping courier on time.
Summer Season: March to May
The summer season is anticipated due to the big activities around this period and the fact that it is generally a busy time for most businesses. Graduation day that falls around this period shows a high volume of orders for graduation attire.
Also, since the summer season has the highest temperature of the year, Filipinos mark their calendar for traveling and enjoying beach activities. This happens around Holy Week, which is considered a long holiday celebration. Because of this, the market shows a high volume of beach outfits, summer clothing, luggage, and accessories.
Special celebrations like Mother’s Day are held around May, increasing retail sales of cakes, jewelry, and flowers.
To sum up, the holidays and free time people have during the summer season are the perfect moments to enjoy leisure activities and shopping. This affects the delivery industry and causes challenges for delivery personnel due to dangerous temperatures during this month.
Throughout these months, it’s important to keep water with you to prevent heat-related problems.
Harvest Season: April to May
The Philippines is a tropical country and is abundant with numerous crops, harvested favorably during the summer season.
The dry weather is perfect for the maturation and harvesting of many crops. According to Relief Web, April and May are peak seasons in the Philippines to harvest rice.
Many fruits, such as mangoes, bananas, pineapples, and watermelons, are harvested during this season. The excellent dry weather ensures good conditions for these fruits to ripen, ready to be shipped. The Philippines also has veggies like corn, eggplants, petchy, and string beans that are ideal for harvesting.
In conclusion, this season is an excellent time for harvesting, which causes peak shipping season due to the demand for transportation. This ensures crops are fresh and transported to markets and distribution centers.
Back to School Season: June to August
Due to the challenges of the pandemic, the school year was pushed back from the previous month of June to August. Now, this has become the busiest peak shipping season for parents and students preparing to gather school supplies for the incoming school year.
At this moment, wholesalers and retailers are increasing their stocks in preparation for a high volume of purchases.
Halloween and Christmas Season: Late October to December
These two holiday seasons are the busiest during peak season.
During Halloween preparation, Filipinos are busy buying food, flowers, and candles before visiting the graves of their loved ones.
It’s a tradition that Filipinos value and will remain an important event, so buying essential items is necessary.
Once Halloween is over, the long preparation for the Christmas season begins.
As early as November, businesses are filling their stocks for Christmas decor, best-selling products, and recados (ingredients) for the upcoming Noche Buena.
During this time, not only delivery transport is busy, but car transportation as well.
How Do Delivery Couriers Prepare for Peak Shipping Season?
- Forecast demand – Read credible information on the internet and news regarding historical data and market trends. Taking notes on gathered data will help you create a plan and take action more effectively.
- Hire extra help – Driving and lifting bulk packages can cause fatigue and can affect the quality of service. For peak shipping season, hiring extra staff is beneficial when you have bulk orders and loads of schedules. This will create convenience in transporting goods from your vehicle to your destination.
- Create a shipping schedule – A proper schedule is very important for shipping services because it will serve as your guide when you do your deliveries. For instance, learning how to utilize technology like a simple spreadsheet or notes creates a new outlook on how you can monitor your bookings and inquiries. This way, you can also check which deliveries are your top priority.
- Train your employees – Train your staff with the dos and don’ts of transporting packages and the right manners. For instance, there are deliveries that are prohibited and cannot be transported. When this happens, you have to give your staff proper training on how to handle customer rejection. You also have to allocate customer service training to handle inquiries and complaints positively. Lastly, ensure that they are well-versed in handling bulk and fragile items.
- Communicate with customers – The most important characteristic every business needs to have is good communication with customers. Communication has two results: it can either leave a good impression that can lead to the growth or downfall of your business. Proper communication can lead to business partnerships and good reviews, while miscommunication can lead to confusion and bad reviews. Hence, it’s important to establish proper communication with your customers to ensure that they are satisfied with your service.
Conclusion:
Peak shipping season is the period when shipping transport services are at their busiest. Although there are times when transporting goods is manageable, the high volume of bookings can lead to complicated work.
Hence, understanding peak seasons is important to improve the course of action to create better sales. Through data gathering, shipping services can enhance their services and improve planning, training, and use of technology efficiently.
For business, peak season is a great time to fill your inventories and maximize your potential earnings. Hiring rental transport services is beneficial to help you move your supplies safely. Look for a trusted partner that can offer you peace of mind.
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