If your business’s delivery needs have changed dramatically over the last few years, you’re not alone. In a digitally-driven, e-commerce world – where shopping and shipping are continuously being disrupted – your customers’ expectations for speed, reliability, flexibility and convenience have never been higher. In the future, those demands will only accelerate, as more and more consumers come to see same-day delivery, service guarantees and more, as standard ways of doing business. Living up to their expectations means always staying one, or maybe ten, steps ahead of them.
At Purolator, we’ve already stepped up by investing over $1 billion into meeting your changing needs through a commitment to continuous improvement and innovation, year after year. Just as your goal is to create value for your customers and constantly surprise and delight them, ours is to do the exact same thing for your business.
Where can you see these innovations in action, right now? We’ve already reduced delivery wait times by expanding our fleet of Mobile Quick Stop trucks, which enable customers to use an app to choose where and when they pick up packages. Located in neighbourhoods in the Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa, Montreal and Metro Vancouver, these specially branded trucks offer consumers a convenient, secure place to pick up deliveries they missed at home. Customers can even have packages sent directly to a Mobile Quick Stop truck near them. Over the next five years, we’ll also introduce automated parcel lockers and boxed locker extensions where consumers can receive packages securely. We are even testing electric cargo bikes (e-bikes) for fast delivery with a reduced carbon footprint.
Our expanded network means delivering through more routes, with greater speed and reliability. With our new 110,000-square-foot facility in North York, Ont. opening this September, we’ll be adding more than 135 new routes in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada’s busiest market. In 2021 –– just a little over two years from now –– your business will benefit from even more service improvements with the opening of our new $330 million “super hub.” With triple our current capacity and new world-class automation, we’ll be equipped to meet record volume delivery demands, even during peak business times. Our new hub gives us the capability to quickly scale up, so we’ll be ready to step up to new opportunities and challenges, right along with you.
You’ll see signs of our continuous innovation at street level too, with close to 500 new trucks equipped with leading edge technology, designed to make the delivery process more streamlined and delivery times more predictable. On-board sensors will use pattern recognition to predict slowdowns and service disruptions (think of a major traffic tie-up or an incoming storm), so we can notify customers ahead of time and adjust our service.
Like our smart new truck fleet, we’re always planning ahead. How can we use AI and machine learning to make the delivery experience even better in the future? To find out, we’re committing $3.2 million to establish a Research Chair that will help us continue to grow our capabilities in AI, data analytics and machine learning. It all comes down to using the full potential of technology to provide faster, better customer service.
See how our $1 billion investment is delivering the future to Canada
We’re glad to have you along for the ride into an exciting and innovative new future. Fasten your seat belt.