Protecting Health, Safety, and Final-Mile Delivery During a Pandemic
Q: What measures have you implemented to protect health and safety in your warehouses?
A: When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, supply chains around the world were impacted. With a robust safety and quality program in place prior to the pandemic, Suddath® was able to respond and adapt immediately to ensure our customers’ supply chains remained strong and there was minimal disruption to their business. We enacted strict requirements that protect our warehouse workers, suppliers, and vendors, as well as our customers and their customers.
Our COVID-19 prevention and mitigation protocols include 24- to 72-hour pre-screenings and fit-for-duty health checks, including elevated temperature checks at all warehouse operations; increased cleaning and disinfection; 6-foot physical distance or personal protection (PPE) used at all times; minimal to contactless pickup and delivery; and a return to work process that includes negative tests and contract tracing.
Throughout our more than 20 owned locations we have implemented added health initiatives to meet this goal, including:
- Infrastructure changes for increased health and safety, including adding additional sanitation stations and rearranging workstations to allow for six-foot physical distance
- Enhanced good hygiene practices (GHP) program, such as cloth face masks worn inside six-foot shared space, regular hot water hand washes, and additional disinfection wipes and sprays used in shared spaces
- Prescreening questions asked to origin and destination shipper, warehouse and drivers about mask protocol, domestic and international travel, safety precautions and COVID-19 exposure
Q: How is Suddath handling final-mile deliveries?
A: To continue to keep our customers’ supply chains strong, Suddath quickly adapted our protocols to enhance the safety of the end customer in final mile deliveries. As America’s largest commercial mover, we are experts in providing services in a variety of environments. And, our roots as one of America’s largest household goods movers means you are working with a provider who has been successfully going into people’s homes for over 100 years. This combined experience means we understand the challenges of many environments and have precautions in place to protect health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our final-mile solutions combine the strict safety measures of our residential and commercial moving protocols, including an enhanced screening process, social distancing, use of PPE such as masks and gloves, forgoing handshakes, sanitizing shared surfaces, and minimizing contact with customers.
We combine this with industry leading, award-winning Tracker Last Mile mobile application, which provides end-to-end visibility to customer work orders, including scheduling, quality control check lists, photos, automated service updates with modern customer communication features including chat, text, and pulse surveys. Our Tracker application also provides a seamless process for escalations and product returns ensuring customers receive timely follow through on open issues and return requests.