Getting around town with Sun City Couriers

Moving packages takes communication, planning and patience

Moving packages takes communication, planning and patience. — George Doyle/Stockbyte/Thinkstock photo

Moving envelopes and small packages around Cranbrook takes communication, planning and patience.

Sun City Couriers has been part of the local business community for 20 years. Owner John Darula has a courier team that stays busy right within the city. One of the company's mainstays is industrial supply delivery between businesses.

According to Darula, in the courier business “you have to accommodate the customer's time needs while still being reasonably economical with what you do.”

Sun City uses radio dispatch to stay in contact with drivers. For Darula, the radio is still an effective way to keep vehicles moving efficiently between pick­up locations and delivery destinations.

“We have to align our drivers on the road with who's in the area for the pick­up and which direction they're going," said Darula, "so they aren't going back and forth across the tracks or going in circles."

These tracks he mentions are the CPR railroad tracks that run through Cranbrook. They often pose big problems for courier drivers trying to make timely deliveries. Delays at the tracks can be anywhere from a brief stop to 20 minutes.

"There are... man­ hours, fuel and environmental costs associated with having guys sitting waiting for a train to go by,” Darula said.

Changing with the times

The biggest change in the courier business over the past 10 years has been the impact of the Internet and electronic documents. Moving paper documents between customers has pretty much evaporated.

“We've seen a major decrease in the document business,” said Darula.

The other big change for Sun City is the industry's move to electronic package processing.

“I don't know if it makes things more efficient," said Darula. "It's supposed to. The back­side of it is monitoring and capturing everything that happens electronically and cross referencing. So that's the challenge.”

While online shopping and the resulting shipment of small packages has grown to a significant volume, it is not part of Sun City's courier business. The movement of Internet purchases is almost exclusively handled by Canada Post and large international couriers, Darula said.