Tile Delivery

Mark:  Hi, I'm Mark Bossert from Top Local. I'm here with my good friend, Mark Huggan of Phantom Couriers in Vancouver, BC. Vancouvers favourite couriers, and one of the fastest growing companies in BC and across the country. We're going to talk about flooring and tile delivery during a pandemic, but also there's some challenges with this. What's going on, Mark?

Mark H: Well, yeah, you know, flooring obviously gets trucked around every single day. And then laminate flooring, hardwood flooring, all sort of substrate flooring. It's so easy delivery, but nobody wants to tackle tile delivery. All the big trucking companies, they don't want to do it because, well, the tiles are broken, they get broken and nobody has set up, you know, a process to establish that, yeah tiles get broken in shipping, in the container. What's going on?  

So acceptable loss has to be realized and established. And so I'm hoping to start cornering that market because if we find out, okay, you can pick up a pallet of tile and there's a bunch of crumbled stuff underneath of it. If the operator sees it, that's a little  indicator that there's some damaged tiles. So if there's an  inspection by the driver on pickup, it may take a little bit of extra time but in the long run, it's going to save time because you're not going to have a job that's cut short by a couple of tiles are broken on a pallet. And nobody wants to get down and do that hard work. They just want to zip in, throw a forklift at it, pick it up, throw it on a truck and take it out there and then just get yelled at later.

So I find a lot of people are shying away from the tile business and I was like, well, it's an excellent opportunity to go in there and do it right. Set up a system and procedure and start just cornering the market. And I'd like to do that. I'd like to be like to be that guy. I've already talked to my operators and they understand exactly why people hate tile delivery. But they were surprised that I said, well, if we just established some protocols at the beginning, we could probably be very successful. And being that they drive trucks and they have bills to pay, they're down with doing extra work. So that's something we're looking at now. A lot of times with the builds, you need to take, say flooring out of a manufacturer or a wholesaler or distributor, and it's not ready to be like, they want it out with the door supply chain demands that it needs to move. So no stock can come in. And if the construction crews are laid up by a couple of days, well storage charges and all that starts to add up and it puts a huge cost on the trucking side. 

So in east Van, we've got a cross dock where we can easily store stuff for 48 hours before it fills up and has to move. So it gives an extra two days, and it's not a huge cost and we can start helping people, so when they say there's a three hour window of opportunity to get it to the site. So the guys can unload it and bring it into the house by the end of the day, to start working on it tomorrow, we can facilitate that stuff and working with the builders. Because their timelines are tight and one thing goes wrong  like an air compressor blows, boom. They're not there now for two hours, two hours is eight, eight hours a day. Bing boom bam and you know, if it all comes down to the truck waiting on the curb, takes off and has to come back the next day for a full pop delivery charge.

So the flooring thing is a good niche market. I'd like to explore it. It's great for trucks because it's heavy. It fills up trucks nicely. They would keep us busy. And there's a lot of it, you know with restoration going on through the winter, there's lots of flooding. Laminate has to be done. Those guys, the restoration guys, they're drawing out the house one day. They're ready to lay the next. They need that on-time delivery. We're down to do that. 

So restoration companies, construction companies, new or old, it doesn't matter if you're doing renovations or new builds, Phantom's down to do the work. And with the tile, anybody's had a problem with the tile delivery, let's talk. Because if we can set up an established parameters for like acceptable loss and there'll be no surprise, and then everything should start smoothing out along the way. And then one job will lead to the next, the next, the next, and then that builder's successful and so where are we. 

Mark: So if you're a builder or renovator in Vancouver or even a tile place that wants a reliable delivery service, that's accountable, that will make sure who made the damage has to fix it, not just blame the last guys who touched it because maybe it was broken before that. Give Phantom Couriers a call. You can reach them at (604) 899-5447. Or if you're anywhere else in Canada one eight, four, four eight nine nine five four four seven. I was going to say North America, but you're not there yet.

Mark H:  Just Canada today, today. Yeah. 

Mark: Thanks Mark. 

Mark H: Right on man. Thank you.