A pallet for Cornwall on a trunk to Yorkshire
The unloaders scan a pallet and it does not match anything on your inbound list. The label says a postcode two hundred miles away. It has come to you by mistake. Somewhere, a depot is probably holding one of yours.
It goes to one side. Somebody is meant to tell the hub, record it on the network system and put it back on tonight's outbound trunk. On a busy morning that gets done late, or not at all, and the pallet sits in your depot while its consignee waits.
Misroutes start in more than one place
It is easy to blame the hub, and sometimes it is the hub. But misroutes also start with things your depot controls.
- A wrong or mistyped postcode at booking sends the pallet to the wrong zone.
- An old label left on a reused pallet is read instead of the new one.
- A pallet is loaded onto the wrong outbound trunk at a depot with more than one.
- The hub sorts it to the wrong bay, often when labels are hard to read.
Without a log, every misroute is treated as a one-off, and the pattern is never seen.
What misroutes cost
A misrouted pallet is at least a day late and often two. The consignee complains, the sending depot complains, and the pallet uses floor and trunk space at your end without earning anything.
Misroutes of your own outbound pallets reflect on your depot. If most of them trace back to postcode errors at booking, that is a problem you can fix, but only once you can see it.
Then there is the office time: calls to the hub, emails to other depots and searches through the network system for a pallet that may be anywhere.
How we log and resolve misroutes
- At unload, any pallet that is not on your inbound list or is for a postcode outside your area is flagged on the scanner.
- A misroute record is created with the label photo, the consignment and the correct destination.
- The hub and the network system are updated through whatever route members use, and the pallet is added to tonight's outbound trunk manifest.
- For your own outbound pallets reported as misrouted elsewhere, the record pulls in the booking, the label and the trunk it left on.
- Each misroute is given a cause from a short list: postcode, label, loading, hub sort, unknown.
- A monthly view shows misroutes by cause and by customer, so you can fix the ones that start with you.
| Cause | Where it starts | What you can change |
|---|---|---|
| Wrong postcode | Booking | Postcode validation at booking |
| Old label | Customer or collection | Voided label check at collection |
| Wrong trunk | Your loading | Scan check at the trailer |
| Hub sort | Hub | Evidence to raise with the network |
We cannot change how the hub sorts. We can make sure your depot's part is right and that you have the evidence when it is not.
After a few months of logging
Misrouted pallets that arrive with you go back on the same night's trunk far more often, because they are caught and recorded at unload rather than found later. Your own misroutes become traceable, and the causes you control start to shrink.
When you raise hub sorting with the network, you do it with a list of dates and photos rather than a general complaint.
Do you recognise this?
- Misrouted pallets sit in the depot for more than a day.
- Nobody records why a pallet was misrouted.
- Your own pallets are found at other depots.
- Postcode errors at booking are common.