People have often said to me that it’s very difficult to stand out in the moving industry because everyone does the same thing.  Hmm!  Not so sure about that.  If everyone is the same, I would have thought it was really easy to stand out in the crowd.  In the moving industry you don’t have to be very different to be extraordinary.   

Now it has been a year or two since I was at the sharp end of international moving, in an operational sense.   

Actually, it’s a smidgen over 30 years, and I know things have changed along the way.  But people haven’t changed. People are still scared of the same things, most of which are nothing to do with moving their belongings.  But of the list of concerns for most moving customers, there are some that the moving company can address: arriving on time; careful packing to avoid damage; courtesy around the house; good communication; etc.   

But there is one other thing that is often foremost in the minds of customers.  Something that concerns them, possibly, more than anything else: knowing when their things will arrive at their destination.   

This has taken on new relevance in more recent times as shipment volumes have reduced and customers (including their employers), try to cut costs.  This has prompted an increase in dedicated household goods (HHG) groupage services that reduce costs considerably compared with LCL or FCL.  But they have one big disadvantage: transit time is less predictable.   

Guarantee groupage times? 
So may I suggest something?  Call me crazy if you like (I’ve been called worse).  Why not guarantee groupage transit times for your customers?  That way you take away the worry for them. What!   I hear you scream. We can’t do that.  Oh yes you can!  I know, because, in the 1980s, that’s exactly what I did – and it worked. 

At that time, most of my company’s traffic was loose-wrapped HHG from the UK to the key migrant destinations: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and the USA.  Very standard stuff.  It was, almost exclusively, for private clients; no corporate. One afternoon, probably in February when there wasn’t much work about, I did a little exercise.  I tracked every shipment we had done the previous year and established the average and maximum transit times for groupage services to each destination – door to destination agent’s warehouse.  I discovered that, for example, our average transit time to Australia was 10 weeks, with a maximum of 12 on a handful of occasions.  Nothing more. 

Armed with that information, I started guaranteeing the transit times on groupage shipments at the maximum figure: 12 weeks for Australia, 10 weeks for South Africa, 8 weeks to East Coast USA, etc. I set the periods at levels that I knew I could achieve almost all of the time. Then I guaranteed them to my customers.  

I was so confident that I committed to pay them back 10% of the shipment costs for every week their shipment was late.  Guess what, I never had to pay.  It was dramatically successful.  It gave customers the confidence they needed, and all I had to do was exactly what I was planning on doing anyway.  It gave my company a USP that drew us apart from everyone else.  It made us extraordinary!  What’s more, when the shipments arrived two weeks early, the customers were delighted: we had under-promised and over-delivered. 

So, may I suggest, as the age of HHG groupage begins to enjoy its renaissance, you consider doing something similar?  
 
If it works as well in 2026 as it did in 1986, you’ll be on a winner.