PPL is Poised for a Record-breaking Season. For the fifth time round, it has defended the title of Most Trusted Brand of the Year

PPL enters this year's season with a wide range of news. “During the whole year we invested millions into strengthening the capacity of our network - the construction of new depots - for example in Rochlice and Úžice, the acquisition of new cyclo-depots in Liberec, Hradec Králové, Olomouc, České Budějovice, implementation of the first electrical deliveries, upgrading of technologies at current depots and, again, taking a big step forward in the area of digitalisation,” states Petr Horák, CEO of PPL. 

The biggest news in the run-up to the Christmas season was the launch of PPL Parcelboxes. In addition to delivery by a driver to an address, or to nearly 3,000 partner locations, the so-called Parcelshops, Parcelboxes offer consumers another alternative when picking up and sending their parcels. We have equipped our entire Parcelshop network with payment terminals, and it takes our customers only a few seconds to receive cash on delivery parcels - without the need to handle cash. In addition, Parcelshops and Parcelboxes are very popular when returning any delivered parcels from e-shops.

“We believe that the option to pick up your parcel at own convenience will be really appreciated in the pre-Christmas time, yet we urge everyone to collect their parcels from the collection points as soon as possible, making room for others,” says Petr Horák, CEO of PPL.   PPL expects a growing interest in picking up shipments from the collection points, with a delivery of three million shipments to the collection during the season alone. 

Before Christmas, we expect to deliver 300 thousand shipments per day, with 12 million deliveries envisaged after the season, so for the whole year the number will grow to 55 million deliveries. “If, in reality the interest significantly exceeds our expected number of deliveries, we have prepared a backup scenario, whereby we would maintain good quality of our services", says CEO of PPL, Petr Horák.
    
Preparations for the season took place throughout the year. “We have modified a number of internal processes that will bring acceleration and increased network capacity, we have also focused on improving efficiency of the individual workplaces, further upgrading our security technologies, thanks to which we further increase not only the safety of our workers, but also of the shipments. We also focused on increasing our heavy transport equipment (trucks, interchangeable superstructures). On the main artery of our network - the central depot - a modification of the sorting technology was implemented, which will result in an increase in capacity and quality of sorting the shipments,” describes David Voznička, Chief Operating Officer of PPL.

 Over 2,000 drivers will deliver shipments in the season. 'We bought new, modern scanners and paperless payment terminals for them to speed up and facilitate their work. There have also been many modifications to our scanner applications throughout the year to bring further streamlining and optimisation. We know how challenging this period is for our drivers, so we try to make their job easier or please them with little things like snacks and other benefits,” adds David Voznička.
As every year, PPL increases its staffing capacity by hundreds of seasonal drivers as well as handlers. The recruitment of new workers proceeded continuously throughout the year.

When to order goods for them to arrive before Christmas? 
From Saturday 20. 11. until 19.12., operations will also be extended to include Saturdays.  A detailed calendar of our business ours can be found here. One can expect the busiest days to be around 16. and 17. December.  Parcels to arrive by Christmas should be ordered no later than 20. December. “We would like to ask the parcel recipients to try to time their purchases to help package firms manage the busy time better,” adds Voznička.

                         

For the fifth time, PPL is the most trusted brand of the year
PPL freshly defended the title the Most Trusted Brand of the Year in the Package Services category - for the fifth time round. 

“We are very pleased to have defended the title of the Most Trusted Brand of the Year in the Package Services category, fifth time in the row. At the same time, I would like to thank our customers, partners and consignment recipients for their custom. Big thanks go to all employees, drivers and workers, too. You can have state-of-the-art technology, but PPL is mainly created by our people and their passion for parcels. Each is an important link in the process - from our colleagues in offices, handlers at both depots and transship centres, our colleagues with headphones in customer centres to drivers behind the wheel. This is award goes to them. It is an appreciation of their daily great work, for which I would like to thank them,” concludes Petr Horák.