It hardly seems that the dust has settled from our last change of news wholesaler, when we switched from T.Cox & Son to Dawson News, that its all change again. News wholesaler changes create a lot of disruption, particularly in the first few weeks.
 
Invariably delivery times slip back, which cause a lot of difficulties meeting the deadlines to get our eight rounds out. Then you and your staff have to adapt to new procedures, new documentation and accounts as well forging new relationships with the new wholesalers staff.

With News International recently switching the distribution of their titles from Dawson News to T. Weller we have again experienced all these same problems. This time though we have two news wholesalers to contend with, with completely different procedures. On a recent Sunday morning they arrived nearly two hours apart. When one wholesaler arrives before 5.00am and the other not till 6.45am, I have staff standing around doing nothing, as they can’t distribute to my shops until nearly 7.30am, even though we open at 6.30am.

Things have improved and the delivery times are better, but it took some complaining to both T Weller and News International.
For the privilege of all this turmoil, I now pay T Weller a carriage charge of £15.75 a week, with no reduction in the Dawson News carriage charge. 

So unless I’ve missed a trick I am now paying an extra £825 a year for what is essentially a less efficient service and in the case of T. Weller I have to wait an additional week for my news credits. In the current economic climate, that’s another significant blow for the CTN and convenience sector.

If all this disruption isn’t enough, we now hear that in the next few months Menzies Distribution will takeover from Dawson News and the whole merry-go-round starts again.