Construction Material Delivery: All You Need to Know

Do you find it challenging to align your construction material delivery schedules with your client’s project timelines and changing demands? 

Are poorly planned routes causing your drivers to take costly detours, making it challenging to reduce last-mile delivery costs?

Is it becoming overwhelming to keep your clients informed on delivery statuses only to face dissatisfaction?

If YES, this blog is for you.

You can consider it a comprehensive handbook to understand:

• How construction material delivery is different from regular delivery
• The challenges that construction material delivery services face
• The strategies you can implement to overcome those challenges

So, let’s dive in.

How Do Construction Material Delivery Operations Differ from Regular Deliveries?

Delivering building materials to a construction site requires a specific approach that meets the site’s unique demands. Here are a few noticeable aspects that make it different.

• Special delivery requirements: Deliveries destined for domestic or office addresses typically don’t need special handling arrangements. Contrarily, construction material delivery may require special equipment like cranes or forklifts and designated unloading areas. 
• Increased emphasis on timeliness: Construction projects run on more stringent deadlines that you must meet to avoid unwanted disruptions.
• Safety compliance: Construction deliveries require strict adherence to safety protocols, such as wearing personal protective equipment, following fixed routes designated for navigating the site, and ensuring vehicles are optimally loaded.
• More developed driving skills: Drivers in the construction industry must have more advanced driving skills than essential driver skills. They must be good at navigating tight spaces, maneuvering sharp turns, and unloading materials safely in job sites with space constraints.
• Continuous communication is a must: Communication with site managers and coordinators is essential to staying informed of site-specific issues, such as waterlogging, trenches, or electrical hazards. This helps you prepare for deliveries accordingly and ensure drivers’ safety. 

Now that you know how construction material deliveries differ, let’s understand the challenges.

5 Challenges in Construction Material Delivery

As discussed, delivering building materials or supplies differs from standard deliveries in terms of driver skills, timeliness, and delivery requirements.

These differences present a set of unique challenges as follows.

1. Regulatory compliance  

Delivering bulk construction materials typically requires special permits that specify certain roads and times for their transportation to minimize interference with regular traffic. 

Moreover, you must stay informed of the maximum legal cargo weight and dimensions allowed on the road to prevent legal penalties. So, using route management software to define vehicle capacity constraints and plan loads accordingly can help you achieve that. 

2. Stringent delivery time windows

Construction sites often need deliveries within stipulated timeframes to avoid hampering ongoing work. 

Multiple reasons, such as unforeseen weather changes, vehicle breakdowns, or traffic congestion, make meeting these delivery time windows hard. Specifying delivery time windows for each stop and optimizing routes using route optimization software can help you meet them.

3. Absence of skilled drivers

Several construction sites have rough terrain and space constraints. So, finding and hiring delivery drivers who excel at maneuvering large commercial vehicles may be challenging as they are fewer and more expensive than standard delivery drivers.

4. Lack of in-transit route visibility 

Without centralized fleet tracking software, you may wonder when they can expect to receive them. As a result, you may fail to communicate ETAs to your clients, rendering them unable to approve and prepare the site for unloading and causing delivery delays. 

5. Poor collaboration 

As construction material deliveries involve suppliers, contractors, and transporters, establishing coordination among these multiple parties may be cumbersome. Moreover, construction sites are prone to unforeseen conditions, including rough weather, vandalism, and theft. Without proper communication between you and contractors, preparing for deliveries or adjusting schedules based on site conditions and available resources might become hard. 

If you are wondering how to overcome these challenges, read the next section to understand how to optimize construction material delivery.

8 Effective Strategies to Optimize Construction Material Deliveries

Optimizing construction material deliveries requires a strategic approach that includes real-time collaboration, route optimization, and last-mile carrier tracking.

Here are the 8 proven tips to optimize material deliveries.

1. Choose the right delivery business model 

There are broadly two types of business models in the construction industry, as follows:

• On-demand or same-day deliveries: Also referred to as Just-in-Time (JIT) delivery, they suit small-sized orders that need to be transported to the construction site as demanded. It generally leverages independent contractors to deliver materials using a van or pickup truck. 
• Heavy haul delivery suits the transportation of large, heavy, or specialty items, including construction equipment or oversized machinery that requires large trucks to handle.

Your choice of delivery model depends on your budget and preferences in the types of orders you receive. 

As a thumb rule, small startups opt for JIT delivery in their initial phase of growth. Once established in the market, they can incorporate the heavy haul business model.

2. Communicate with contractors or site managers 

Coordination with builders and contractors is vital to determining the quantity and types of materials required for the project. You can also note delivery timelines to ensure that you keep the requisite materials ready whenever needed to prevent sourcing delays. 

This step helps prevent the last-minute hassle of sourcing materials, especially heavy items like iron beams, and planning their delivery. It also helps builders prevent the project from stalling due to the shortage or unavailability of desired materials. 

3. Create optimal delivery routes

Creating optimal routes is key to meeting stipulated delivery time frames while optimizing load planning. 

It requires you to factor in multiple constraints, such as: 

• Delivery time windows
• Type and weight of materials you need to deliver.
• Type of your delivery vehicle: a tipper, covered semi-trailer, or dump truck.
• Vehicle payload capacity in terms of weight, volume, and the number of items measured in units, such as pounds, cubic meters, and pallets.
• Traffic constraints specific to commercial vehicles on certain roads or at different times
• The average duration of unloading per stop

Using route planning and optimization software like Upper can help you plan multi-stop routes based on all the above constraints to streamline your construction delivery operations.

4. Assign your routes wisely

While creating efficient routes is important, assigning them to the right drivers is equally valuable. For that, you must consider the type of vehicle or truck required along a route and determine the driver who can drive it efficiently and safely. 

Before assigning a specific route to a driver, you may also want to consider the additional factors, such as:

• The type of commercial driving license (Class A, Class B, or Class C)
• Leaves and specified break durations 
• Driver’s availability and occupancy rate
• Drivers’ start and end points and driving preferences, such as avoiding tolls

5. Track your route progress to stay adaptable to sudden changes

Once you have dispatched drivers on their assigned routes, the next step is keeping track of their real-time movements. 

Monitoring your shipment’s status in real time helps spot issues such as:

• Emergency or accidents
• Traffic congestion
• Vehicle breakdown

This will help you take proactive measures to minimize the impact of those issues.

For instance, if one of your drivers’ vehicles breaks down, you can immediately assign the pending stops to another available driver to complete deliveries as scheduled. Some route planning software like Upper provides real-time visibility into your shipments, facilitating informed decisions to tackle unprecedented situations, as discussed.

6. Communicate your drivers’ real-time delivery progress to clients

Unlike regular deliveries to residential or commercial addresses, delivering materials to a job site may require proper planning, such as:

• Identifying the appropriate unloading space.
• Determining the safest routes within the site for heavy vehicles to follow.
• Arrange special unloading equipment, such as forklifts, cranes, side loaders, or conveyor belts, based on unloading requirements.

This is why conveying your drivers’ real-time progress and accurate ETAs to contractors or procurement managers becomes non-negotiable.

It will help them stay prepared to unload the shipment as soon as it arrives, minimizing your drivers’ waiting time. This, in turn, will help your drivers cover more stops along their route, increasing their overall productivity while reducing their fuel and wear/tear costs.

7. Document your delivery

Verifying your successful delivery as contracted is imperative to prevent lost liability and fake claims of ‘undelivered items.’ 

One of the important documents is the Bill of Lading (BOL), a legal contract signed between the shipper and carrier that mentions the agreed terms and conditions for transportation. It contains details such as: 

• Shipper and recipient details
• Recipient’s address
• Carrier details
• Date of shipment
• Description of goods – weight, volume, number, etc.
• Freight charges
• Special shipping instructions

Once your driver delivers the ordered materials, the on-site project manager or contractor must sign the BOL to ensure legal compliance.

8. Implement construction delivery route management software

Investing in the right delivery route management software can help you optimize your construction deliveries. It helps optimize your delivery routes based on preferred delivery time slots, drivers’ availability and schedules, and traffic patterns.

Some advanced routing software like Upper also provides:

• Live GPS tracking can help you monitor up-to-the-moment delivery progress. 
• Vehicle capacity constraints, such as maximum weight, volume, and number of pallets, are used to optimize routes accordingly while optimizing capacity utilization. 
• In-transit route edits and route swapping between drivers to accommodate last-minute orders or unforeseen events, such as emergencies or vehicle breakdowns.
• Bulk SMS to customers along a specific route assigned to a driver to notify them of late departure, along with clear reasons to build trust and maintain transparency.
• Proof of delivery is needed to collect the photos of materials delivered to the on-site recipient’s e-signatures digitally via their smartphone to ensure accountability and avoid legal disputes. Drivers can add comments (including missing items, delayed reception, etc.) to provide more details about completed deliveries for further analysis.
• Custom reports to analyze drivers’ performance based on the total stops delivered, missed, or pending to identify and eliminate supply chain bottlenecks or inefficiencies

It’s Time to Optimize Your Construction Material Delivery

Delivering construction materials differs from regular deliveries due to stricter timelines, specific handling needs, and safety protocols. 

It also poses challenges like stringent delivery time windows, regulatory compliance, and driver skill shortages that require a strategic approach.

Nevertheless, you can choose the right delivery model, maintain communication with contractors, optimize your routes, and track your delivery vehicles in real-time to optimize your material deliveries. 

You can also install route management software to address these challenges by optimizing routes, facilitating communication, and ensuring last-mile visibility. By implementing these strategies and leveraging route planning software solutions, you can streamline delivery operations, improve efficiency, and boost customer satisfaction.