Delivering yourself in your own region: what to bring and how to arrange the handover
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by Verpakkingdeals.nl
6 min reading time
Delivering orders yourself in your own city or village saves shipping costs, but requires different preparation than shipping. This is how you pack, stack the car, and arrange the handover.
You have four orders, three of which are going to an address less than ten minutes away. Giving them to a carrier costs you money per package, a label, and a trip to the drop-off point. Delivering them yourself can be quicker and cheaper — but only if you prepare it as seriously as a regular shipment. Anyone who sets off with five loose boxes in the back of the car without a plan will sooner or later deliver something with a dent, to the wrong house, or without anyone knowing it has been delivered.
Self-delivery is not an intermediate solution between shipping and pickup. It's its own method, with its own choices in packaging, order, and handover. Below is what's different, and what supplies you'll need for it.
Packaging for the car is not the same as packaging for a carrier
A package going into transport must be able to withstand sorting machines, falls, and stacks. A package that you personally carry from your packing table to a front door makes only three movements: from table to car, from car to door, from door to customer. This means you often need less padding, and the box mainly needs to be neat and recognizable.
Do seal the box properly. Loose flaps opening in the car are the most common cause of mess in the back seat. A roll of KINZO packaging tape 50 meters x 48 mm (€3.00) is therefore just as useful in the car as on your packing table, along with a tape dispenser with 2 rolls (€9.95) for when you need to reseal something on the go.
One crate instead of loose boxes
The biggest gain is in how you organize the car. Loose packages slide, tip over, and disappear under seats. A sturdy bin where everything stands upright solves that in one go. A moving box of 480 x 430 x 330 mm (50 liters) (€3.50) is perfectly suitable for this: you place the packages upright in it, with the address side up, in the order of your route.
Three practical rules for stacking:
Heavy at the bottom, light at the top. Sounds obvious, but in a half-full bin, things often go wrong because you remove items along the way.
Last address at the bottom. You unpack from top to bottom, so the first address is on top.
Do not stack items that can bulge. Clothing, textiles, and soft contents compress. Place these next to the stack, not underneath.
If you drive a route through multiple districts, use two bins: one per district. This saves searching at each stop and prevents you from standing on the doorstep with your entire stock.
Make sure you know what you're delivering at the door
With a regular shipment, the label does the thinking. With self-delivery, you are at the door yourself, often with multiple packages in your hands, and you need to see in two seconds which one belongs to which address. A large label with name and street on top of each box is the minimum.
A simple extra that yields a lot: color per trip or per district. With price stickers in 6 colors, 500 pieces (€2.95), you place a colored dot on each box. Green is the morning round, blue is the afternoon round. You can see at a glance if there's anything in the bin that doesn't belong there.
If you're delivering something valuable, or if the customer wants to be sure the box hasn't been opened on the way, seal it with a security seal with VOID sticker, 60 pieces (€9.95). When removed, visible evidence remains. This is especially useful if you deliver yourself and there's no track-and-trace to tell the story for you.
The handover: the part people forget
A carrier scans, gets signatures, and registers. If you do it yourself, there's no system that records that the package has been delivered. Therefore, agree in advance how you will handle it and also state this on your website or in the confirmation email:
Announce a time slot, not a specific time. "Between 5:00 PM and 7:00 PM" is feasible; "at 5:20 PM" is not.
Ask for an alternative. Neighbors, shed, mailbox — let the customer choose in advance what is allowed if they are not home.
Record the delivery. A photo at the door or a text message "delivered to" takes ten seconds and prevents discussion.
Bring a packing slip. A separate packing slip or invoice in a white envelope of 156 x 220 mm, 500 pieces (€3.00) makes it a bit more professional than a loose piece of paper.
If no one is home and the package doesn't fit through the letterbox, simply take it back with you. A box left at the door without arrangement is your risk – not the customer's.
When it pays off, and when it doesn't
Calculate honestly once what a round costs you. Add up your time (there, stops, back), your fuel, and your parking fees, and divide that by the number of addresses. Compare that amount with what you save on shipping costs. For four addresses within a ten-minute drive, this usually works out positively. For two addresses on the other side of the city, rarely.
What often tips the scale are the things you can't express in money: you see your customers, you get direct feedback on your packaging, and you can deliver at times when a carrier doesn't drive. For a webshop that's just starting or has many loyal customers nearby, that's the real reason to do it.
Therefore, keep the supplies you need separate from your regular packing stock: one bin, one roll of tape, a set of stickers, a stack of boxes. This way, the delivery round is ready within five minutes instead of you reinventing it every time.
Everything for your delivery round at a glance
Boxes, tape, and seals for your delivery round can be found in Packaging & Shipping, individual box sizes in the Boxes collection, and rolls and dispensers in Tape. Value packs for frequent deliverers are under Value Packaging for Webshops. If you're unsure which box size fits what you deliver, or want to know if a bundle is worthwhile for your quantities? Feel free to email info@verpakkingdeals.nl — we're happy to help you think it through.
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