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.

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.