Gone are the days of a large truck turning up outside of your home with a single purchase. These days one of the extra 1.2 million vans has been added to roads in the last 10 years tends to do the job instead. While more flexible white glove moving services from several suppliers are much cheaper and more efficient.

For low-cost and robust items the cheapest method of moving goods and single pallets is the hub a spoke method. Which basically works by collecting cargo in the afternoon in a small local vehicle fleet and consolidate them into a fully laden articulated vehicle to a central hub.

There are hundreds of them. Every night there is an army of forklift truck loading, unloading, and sorting of items to send home with the articulated vehicle with a new load before dawn. The same fleet of small local vehicles then makes deliveries through the morning before starting to collect another load which repeats the process.

It is a method very similar to those developed and used by the Post Office for letters for decades. Track and trace problems, delays, damage, and even a complete loss common in a cheap and cheerful system. If you sell cherished goods like antique furniture, goods fragile like flat-screen TVs, easily damaged chipboard, or other things or if it is marked as a bed or couch then overnight almost certainly not the best method,