The UK’s Royal Mail has reduced the average time it takes to unload a heavy goods vehicle (HGV) by 97% to just six minutes at its North West Parcel Hub thanks to the new Automatic Trailer Unloader.
Designed and engineered in nine months by Royal Mail’s inhouse team, the Automatic Trailer Unloader speeds up the process of unloading loose-load trailers of up to 8,000 parcels, which previously took 3.5 hours and could only be done manually.
The technology sees the trailers fitted with conveyor belts, providing a seamless connection to the parcel sorting systems inside the Hub, which process around 800,000 parcels a day at speeds of 40,000 parcels per hour.
The first Automatic Trailer Unloader is now live at the hub in Warrington in Northwest England, and a second will be rolled out to the Midlands Parcel Hub in Daventry in the coming months. They will be available to some of Royal Mail’s large account customers, as part of the company’s strategy to roll out more automation to boost efficiency and meet growing demand for next-day deliveries.
Neil Chaplain, Royal Mail’s engineering and process design director, said, “Our new Automatic Trailer Unloader dramatically decreases the processing time for loose-load trailers by removing one of the few manual steps at our Parcel Hubs. There is no technology on the market that solves this issue in a way that fully satisfies our needs, so our team of engineers designed our own solution. It is a fantastic opportunity for our large account customers, enabling consumers to order even later in the day for next-day delivery.”