Smart Courier Allocation: How One Furniture Brand Solved the Peak Season Shipping Puzzle

In the world of large-item logistics, things aren’t as simple as just picking the cheapest courier. 

Take Dusk, for example: a growing furniture brand juggling deliveries through DX, Arrow, Furdeco, and BJS. With bulky goods and tight delivery promises, they needed more than just a label generator. They needed a system that could make smart, real-time decisions across capacity, pricing, and performance - especially ahead of peak. 

So, we built them a solution. 

The Challenge: Daily Courier Capacity Limits

Every day, Dusk receives limits from each courier - either in parcel count or cubic meters. That’s not something most shipping tools can handle. Without proper logic, they risk overselling a courier’s capacity, causing delays and poor customer experiences. 

The Solution: Capacity-Aware Shipping Logic

We designed a system that lets them input courier capacity each day. As parcels are picked, packed, and labelled, the system: 

• Calculates cubic volume of each parcel using dimensions. 

• Tracks how much space is left with each courier. 

• Automatically hides couriers that are at capacity, so warehouse teams never book something that can’t be collected. 

This keeps operations clean and controlled, without manual guesswork. 

What Happens Next: Smart Shipping Rules

Once a courier is ruled out due to capacity, the system moves into smart decision-making: 

• It applies shipping rules based on things like tags, keywords, and postcodes. 

• From there, it calls our billing API to get live pricing across remaining couriers. 

• It picks the cheapest available courier, makes a label request, and books it. 

• If it fails (say, the courier can’t deliver to that postcode or has a service block), it tries the next cheapest, cycling through all options until it succeeds or errors out. 

It’s automation with real-world resilience built in. 

Why This Matters (Especially for Furniture Retailers)

In furniture logistics, a failed booking isn’t just a tech issue: it’s a customer service problem. Imagine ordering a sofa and selecting a delivery date, only to get a call days later saying it’s not possible. Dusk wanted to eliminate that risk, so the system actively "spread bets" their courier options. 

By doing so, they: 

• Keep delivery promises realistic. 

• Minimise manual intervention. 

• Reduce customer service queries. 

Who Else This Can Help

If you're a furniture or bulky-goods brand using Furdeco, BJS, or Arrow: this is for you. We already have strong relationships with these couriers, and the groundwork is done. 

With peak season on the horizon, now’s the time to get your operations future-proofed. 

Want to see how it could work for your warehouse?

Let’s talk about how this logic fits into your tech stack, whether you use Helm WMS, a third-party system, or something bespoke.