For all of us that exist somewhere between supply and demand, freight has become a volatile variable in the equation of expectation over the past few years.

In the US, we have watched as the volume of goods accommodated by large shipping companies has increased while many freight-industry workers, from truckers to terminal staff, are simply leaving their jobs, unhappy with their working conditions and the increased demand. The reality of domestic freight being at maximum capacity combined with intermittent shut-downs and delays due to COVID-19 continues to send rippling effects throughout the supply chain, resulting in longer timeframes required for the shipment of all goods within the US.

The fact that we operate our own warehouse in the US allows us to do absolutely everything we can to get your green-coffee orders out the door as soon as possible. If you place an order with us before noon, it ships out the same day — that’s how dialed-in our warehouse crew is. Unfortunately, once your coffee is on the road, there is not much we can do to make it move faster.

Did you know that every single pallet we send to you gets processed by at least one transfer terminal at some point along its journey to you? This means it goes from our warehouse to another warehouse, where it gets moved from one truck to the next and then continues on its way until it reaches your door. This transfer used to be a relatively quick process, generally taking as little as half a day. Now, we are seeing this process take 3-5 days on average.

We have been developing and building great relationships with some of the best carriers operating in the US for the past 29 years, but at this point, we can definitively say that it is time to change our expectations.

What can we do?

Plan ahead.

We understand that there is no easy answer to this challenge, but we strongly encourage you to explore adding an extra 3-5 days to your delivery expectations from our warehouse to your roastery to help support your own operations.

We know how challenging and frustrating freight expectations can be to navigate – we experience our own level of this on a global scale every day. The more we can all plan ahead, the better.

As always, we’re here to help in every way we can, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to your sales representative, shoot us a message, or give us a call to talk about how we can continue to navigate this together.

TL;DR: Freight has changed, we can adapt to this change together. We suggest adding an extra 3-5 days to your delivery expectations.