Cut-offs that slip on bank-holiday weeks

A builders’ merchant group asked us to set a cut-off calendar for the late-May bank holiday. Their carriers had already published the last collection times. The depot had not translated those times into last-order and last-pick. Sales still quoted Friday noon because that is the line printed on the usual rate card.

We sat with the despatch clerk and the pick supervisor and worked backwards from the published collection. Labour on the Thursday was thinner because two regulars had booked the long weekend. The last complete pick that could still meet the carrier was therefore mid-morning, not noon. Nobody had written that down. The sales desk learned it when a customer rang to ask why a promised Friday van had been rolled to Tuesday.

The calendar we left was a single sheet for the week: last order, last pick, last wrap, last collection, and a note on who is actually rostered. It is not a forecast. It is a translation of carrier paper into warehouse hours.

If you already have next year’s bank holidays circled, send them with your enquiry. We will not invent a peak you have not named.