The moment direct delivery stops working
Most couriers start the same way: a driver picks up a parcel and the same driver — or a colleague from the same depot — delivers it. It works beautifully within one city. Then you open a second branch, and parcels need to travel between them.
That’s the point where a hub-and-spoke model pays off: collect locally, consolidate at an origin hub, move in bulk on a linehaul, and deliver locally from the destination branch.
The building blocks
Branches that serve zones
Each branch is responsible for a set of delivery areas. When a booking is created, the system already knows the origin branch (where it’s collected) and the destination branch (who delivers it).
Scan in at every hand-over
A parcel that isn’t scanned is a parcel you can’t find. Scan it into the origin hub, into a bag, onto the linehaul, into the destination branch and onto the delivery driver’s run.
Bags with seals
Bagging by destination branch turns hundreds of parcel scans at the other end into a handful of bag scans. A seal number and a bag tag make tampering visible.
Linehaul manifests
A manifest lists every bag on a truck between two branches. It’s dispatched at origin and received at destination — and any missing bag is obvious immediately.
Don’t create delivery jobs too early
In a direct model, the delivery job is created as soon as the parcel is picked up. In a hub model, it should be created when the parcel is scanned in at the destination branch. Otherwise drivers see jobs for parcels that are still on a truck 300 km away.
Signs you’re ready for hubs
- More than one branch, with parcels moving between them every day.
- Customers asking “where is it?” for parcels in transit between cities.
- Drivers making long single-parcel trips that a linehaul could replace.
How Logxa handles it
Hub mode in Logxa’s courier software is a setting: branches serve zones, parcels are scanned in with a phone camera or hand scanner, bagged with seals, sent on printable linehaul manifests, and delivery jobs are created at the destination branch. See hubs & linehaul.