Werner is taking its Final Mile service North of the border into Canada

Global freight transportation and logistics services provider Werner Enterprises said today it its expanding its final mile service, entitled Werner Final Mile, into Canada.

Company officials said that Werner Final Mile will provide national delivery and related services to residential and business locations throughout all Canadian provinces and territories. They added that this service leverages the company’s strategic alliance agent network, delivering large or heavy items by two uniformed associates manning a liftgate straight truck, in order for customers to ship things like non-conveyable products, including returns and exchanges, in the United States and Canada.

Types of goods moved by Werner Final Mile include furniture, appliances, medical and fitness equipment, store fixtures, and other heavy goods. Along with the two uniformed associates on each truck, Werner’s technology platform, Werner EDGE, its customer service group, and its delivery agent network, work in tandem to provide customers with what it called safe and damage-free white glove deliveries. 

”We are very pleased to announce the extension of the Werner Final Mile network to serve our clients across North America,” said Craig Stoffel, Vice President of Global Logistics and Final Mile, Werner Enterprises, in a statement. “Our customers rely on our team to execute their highest profile deliveries, interacting with and delivering directly to their end customers’ homes or offices. Our experience in Canada for more than 20 years, combined with our delivery capability, will help many of our E-commerce customers serve new and existing customers in the Canadian market.”

The expansion of Werner Final Mile into Canada comes a little more than three years after it was introduced in the U.S.

In May 2017, Werner said that the Werner Final Mile service would provide nationwide delivery and related services to residential and business locations and leverage its large network of delivery teams with operations in nearly 200 locations. And they added that through this service Werner will mainly deliver large or heavy goods and items with two uniformed associates operating a 24- or 26-foot lift gate straight truck. Types of deliveries this service will provide include: curb or porch delivery; a threshold delivery, where an item is delivered to the first dry area, or a white glove delivery to a room of choice, dunnage is removed, and where light assembly may be provided.

Werner’s Stoffel told LM at the time that there were a few big drivers behind Werner’s decision to enter this market.

“It’s a changing marketplace when it comes to the buying habits in the U.S. and the global population,” said Stoffel. “Nearly half of our revenue is touching retail and affecting a large amount of our customer base and volume. And, for us to continue to add value to our customers, it was a natural step for Werner to expand into this part of the supply chain.”

Stoffel added that entering the market later provided Werner a sense of what technology is necessary in the market, which led Werner to focus on the customer experience from a visibility and technology perspective, adding that with large items being delivered in a white glove service environment, there is a lot of opportunity to improve the efficiency of delivery for Werner’s customers and its customer’s customers, too.

“If you are receiving delivery of a product and there is a problem, whether it was the wrong item or there was a scratch or dent, that sort of disrupted delivery in today’s environment for a lot of service providers can result in myriad phone calls, drivers calling dispatch who calls the coordinator of freight, who, in turn, calls the shipper of the product, with that same call sequence happening in the other direction,” he said. “Werner's technology is geared toward a real-time resolution. It puts the delivery crew and all other participants in the process into direct and real-time conversation about how to solve it and avoid re-work and extra costs associated with re-deliveries, second attempts, and returns.”