A man makes a delivery. - File

While huge trucks laden with goods and sometimes marked with the name of the sales company get a lot of attention, delivery of goods is not restricted to large companies.

Quite a few small businesses offer delivery services, all in the name of customer service and not only building, but simply maintaining the client base.

For hardware and furniture stores, though, delivery is also a matter of moving items that are simply too bulky for customers to transport themselves. As Michael, a second generation hardware store operator on Molynes Road puts it, "you cannot expect a man to get a truck to move some length of steel, cement and block".

For those businesses, delivery is generally understood to be a part of the transaction and covers a wide area. However, restaurants especially have gone into the business of delivering food to their customers. This applies mostly to the lunch hour, when it may not be convenient for persons to leave their workplaces and go stand in a line in order to purchase a meal.

Marked vehicles

Darlton, who operates a restaurant in Papine, now does as much business by delivery as from the persons who come in at lunch time during the work week. "Is about three year now we start to deliver in a area, some by foot and first by bicycle, now we have a scooter man. We don't put any money on the food price to deliver, but I feel that we still don't lose. If we never deliver, we would lose cause those people wouldn't come in. They would go somewhere closer or just get somebody else who deliver," he said.

Competition seems to be a big part of the reason for taking the business to the customer, as even some pharmacies are getting into the services of 'call and fax-in' and delivery of small items.

But there is another reason that large companies send out their goods to the customer in marked vehicles. "Is the best advertising you can get," Michael said. "Every time one of our truck go out, people know we are there and doing business and moving goods."

And not to be left out is the fact that the company which delivers knows just where their clients are, a huge consideration especially in hire purchase situations. As accountant Marie puts it, "the worst thing to not know about money you are supposed to collect is the place that the person who is going to pay lives at".

And hence delivery not only takes the goods to the customer but also brings the customer closer to the company.