Shipping and Receiving

    Now multiply all that effort by thousands, and you’ll have some idea of the difficulty involved in shipping and receiving. And let’s not even talk about returns! The shipping receiving department of today is so central—and so representative of the complexity of modern, globalized business—that one suspects if Adam Smith were writing The Wealth of Nations today, he might well replace his famous pin-factory example with the shipping receiving department of a modern corporation.

    In such an environment, old-fashioned care and intelligence make all the difference. The mail room must keep meticulous records, noting whether payment has been received from the customer, whether and when orders have been sent, and logging customer complaints when mistakes do occur. Every step in an item’s journey from the manufacturer’s assembly line to your door must be recorded. It’s shipping and receiving workers who keep the records that enable retailers to know which items move quickly vs. which items collect dust in a warehouse. And it’s shipping and receiving workers who tell you when your item has shipped and how long it’ll take to reach you.

    But hard work is not enough. Along with smarts and initiative, good tools are a necessity. For example, computers have made the work of shipping and receiving easier and more efficient in some ways, allowing shipping clerks to use barcode scanners, for example, to record all necessary information about an item (or an entire pallet of items) at the touch of a button. These technological breakthroughs make it much easier to track packages in their progress from one place to another. With the help of robotic equipment, too, warehouses can sort items faster. But with these gains in efficiency come increases in customers’ expectations.

    In the long run, it pays to purchase appropriate shipping supplies. Sturdy shipping boxes, packing tape, bubble wrap, and packing peanuts can purchased at shipping companies and truck-rental firms. In addition, clothing, blankets, and pillows can be used as buffers between breakable objects.

    In preparing shipments of outgoing mail, shipping clerks must ensure orders have been filled correctly, as well as filling out shipping supplies and shipping boxes labels. They also record items taken from inventory and note when orders were filled. In smaller operations, a shipping clerk may fill the order themselves: taking merchandise from the stockroom, noting when inventories run low, and packing the goods in shipping boxes. In addition, shipping and receiving clerks prepare invoices and furnish information about shipments to other parts of the company, such as an accounting department. Once a shipment is ready to go, a clerk may sort and move shipping supplies from the warehouse to the shipping receiving dock or truck terminal and direct their loading.