The first edition - read all about it

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The first edition - read all about it

Sep 17, 2019

A warm welcome to Newspaper Delivery Tales, a blog about the trials and tribulations of a local Durham based newspaper delivery business, as well as news and comment on local issues and events in Durham City and its surrounding areas.

Hi, I'm Geoff, owner, proprietor, head chef and bottle washer of Durham City Newstore, my aim is to give you an insight into the daily challenges we face, of ensuring we keep to our promise, to deliver newspapers and magazines to our loyal customer base in time for breakfast.

The day starts at approximately 4.20am, I label this period of the day Nocturnia, it is like a post-apocalyptic time when the majority of mankind are still hibernating in their beds and the only survivors are Durham City Newstore's delivery team, possibly the milkman and the local Durham wildlife (drunk students included).

First job is to bundle up the previous day left over newspapers, ready for return to the wholesaler, who in our case is Smiths News, based on Team Valley in Gateshead. The scheduled arrival time of the days newspapers to us is 4.30am, however this a very rare event and you wouldn't believe how excited and happy I get when I see the van with our newspapers onboard pull up on time (sad I know but hey ho, I am a newsagent).

With the newspapers and magazines unloaded and unpacked, the newspaper delivery rounds are sorted in to delivery order, using the computer generated delivery round sheets, ready for the drivers to hit the road, which we hope to achieve by 5.15am weekdays and 5.45am weekends. Our team of drivers are continually rotated between each of the newspaper delivery rounds to ensure everyone is up to speed no matter where they are delivering newspapers on any particular day.

I mentioned earlier the later departure time of 5.45 at weekends, this is due to the fact the weekend newspapers and their respective supplements arrive separately, meaning the supplements have to be inserted into their matching newspaper, before the newspapers can be sorted in to delivery order, this can take up to an hour to achieve some weeks, dependant on the thickness and how many individual supplements there are to insert.

Saturdays - arrrrggggghhh, see the mere mention of the word brings me out in a cold sweat and sends me into a fit of rage.

For as long as I can remember in this industry, Saturdays have always been a nightmare, regarding the newspapers arriving late from the wholesaler. A minimum, of 30 minutes late has become the norm, compounded by the delay of inserting the weekend supplements, getting the drivers away and newspaper deliveries commencing somewhere near to our schedule is no mean task.

In my humble or bigoted opinion, dependant on which member of my family you speak to, the directors and management team in any other industry, would look into the reasons behind the systemic delays and make changes to improve and resolve the problem but in the world of newspaper distribution its just allowed to continue and fester on (gripe over).

In faireness to the wholesaler, Smiths News, the delays are mainly caused by the newspaper publishers deliveries into their warehouse arriving late, leaving Smiths News very little or no time to achieve their own delivery schedules.

Newspaper delivery publisher performance

The newspaper delivery supply chain is supposed to work as thus:

The individual publishers' wagons have a scheduled arrival time(SAT) into the wholesaler, these times are staggered throughout the night from approximately 2.30am to 3.45am to enable the wholesaler time to offload the pallets of newspapers from one publisher's wagon before the next one arrives.

This unfortunately very rarely happens, all it takes is for one wagon to be late (behind schedule) and the 'bunched arrivals' scenario, referred to in the previous image occurs. The wholesaler set up is akin to a single platform train station, passengers can only disembark one train at a time. The only difference is those passengers can claim compensation if their trains run behind schedule, us mere newsagents cannot.

As you can see in the image (click to enlarge) our region Tyne Tees has the worst SAT compliance % in the country, on average the publishers' wagons only run to schedule 25% of the time. (gripe over)

So every day starts in the lap of the gods or more so, the lap of the publishers and wholesaler but despite my gripes above, I love this business and the unexpected challenges it throws at you on a daily basis. I get to speak and occassionally meet a very loyal and appreciative customer base, I get to see the wildlife, that by night explore the streets and surrounding areas of Durham City, including, foxes, badgers, roe deer, owls, bats and not forgetting the pigeons, who are in the main either darn right stupid and don't realise the dangers of an approaching car or darn right arrogant and will only move when they are good and ready.

I hope you have enjoyed the first edition of Newspaper Delivery Tales and an insight into our industry and not been bored with the statistics and my personal gripes.

Happy reading - until next time.

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Don't hold the back page

25 Sept, 2019

This weeks insight into newsagent, Durham City Newstore's, newspaper delivery service in Durham and the surrounding areas, with a round up of the weeks local durham news.