OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap
Fragile time-critical courier services in Essex
Fragile time-critical courier across Essex. One vehicle, your consignment only, and no depot transfers between your loading door and theirs.
Fragile time-critical courier across Essex
Tasito provides dedicated fragile and time-critical courier services across Essex, from the electronics and engineering units at Maldon and Harlow out to Colchester, Southend and the Thames corridor. Electronics, instruments, glass, prototypes, panels and artwork: the consignment is loaded once, travels alone and comes off at the other end, with no sorting hub and no transfer in between.
That is the whole proposition. Most damage happens during handling rather than during driving, and a dedicated vehicle removes almost all of the handling. Your goods go on at your door and come off at theirs.
What we treat as fragile
An item counts as fragile here if handling is the thing that ruins it, whatever it happens to be made of. Three kinds of work come up most in Essex.
Electronics and instruments are the biggest share in Essex, from the computing and electronics manufacturers around Maldon's Oval Park through to the technology and engineering sites at Harlow. Small, valuable and sensitive to shock rather than heavy, so the smallest vehicle is usually the right one.
Glass and finished surfaces are the other recurring one, from shopfitting and signage work through to worktops, splashbacks and mirrored panels. Heavy for the size, easy to chip on an edge, and the damage is always on the face you can see.
Then there is everything that is fragile by shape rather than material: prototypes, framed work, panels, display units and anything one-of-a-kind where there is no second copy if it arrives broken.
If you tell us what it is, what it is packed in and what would ruin it, we will tell you what our fragile courier service can and cannot do before you book rather than after.
How a fragile consignment is handled
One vehicle, your consignment, nothing else on board. No co-loading, no depot, no overnight leg, no second pair of hands between the two addresses.
The driver who collects is the driver who delivers, which matters more than any equipment on the van. Signed for by a named person rather than left at a reception desk, with the name given at booking.
We will tell you where the limits are before you book. Packaging is yours: we carry what you present and we are not a packing service, so if something arrives at us inadequately packed we would rather say so at collection than drive it. Where a consignment needs a documented chain of custody or recorded monitoring, ask first and we will confirm what is available on the vehicle assigned to your job rather than taking the booking and hoping.
Where this work comes from in Essex
Maldon is the clearest example. Plastics, computers and electronics, with Oval Park the largest employment site, and marine engineering along the Blackwater. Small high-value consignments where the shortest possible handling chain is the point.
Harlow sits at the London end of the county, so the time constraint and the handling constraint usually arrive together, and the deadline is more often somebody else's cut-off than the far address closing.
Southend-on-Sea is mostly about the airport. The cargo desk sits on the same side of town as the industrial estates at Stock Road and Temple Farm, which is where a fragile consignment and a hard freight cut-off land on the same job.
Colchester, Chelmsford and Basildon supply the general run of it: instruments, prototypes, machine parts and anything that has already been built once and cannot easily be built again.
What we send
Small is usually right. A short wheelbase at 450kg with a 2.1m load space suits most fragile work, because these consignments are rarely heavy and a smaller vehicle is cheaper, more manoeuvrable and easier to get close to the door.
Where the item is large or awkward rather than heavy, a long or extra-long wheelbase gives 3.3m or 4.2m of length. Panels and anything that will not pass through a van door go on the flat bed, which takes 2.7m at 800kg.
Where the consignment has to hold a temperature as well, we run one insulated vehicle with its own refrigeration unit, six pallet spaces and a 1,000kg payload. Give us the range it cannot leave and we confirm that before quoting.
Blankets and straps are standard. The fleet page carries the dimensions for all eight classes.
Where our other services fit
Same-day courier where the deadline is today and the handling is ordinary. Two-man delivery where a fragile item is also too large or awkward for one person. Next-day courier where the consignment is delicate but not urgent, which is cheaper and gets a booked slot.
The full fragile time-critical service has the booking detail.
Essex questions
The handling chain rather than the speed. Same-day is already one vehicle with no depot. On a fragile booking we also fix who handles it, who signs for it and what happens if anything about the packaging or the route looks wrong, and we agree that before the van moves.
No. Packing is a separate trade and we do not pretend to do it. If something turns up at collection in packaging that will not survive the journey, you hear it at your door rather than at the other end.
Ask before booking rather than after. One vehicle and one driver gives a short chain by default. Formal documented custody, calibrated monitoring and downloadable records are a separate question, and the answer depends on which vehicle gets allocated.
Same day where a vehicle is free, and we will tell you straight away if one is not. Fragile work needs a short conversation before the van moves, about packaging, access and who signs at the far end, so an hour is far more useful to us than ten minutes. The refrigerated vehicle and anything needing two people want longer than that.
The short wheelbase, almost always. There is nothing to gain from a bigger van on a load that weighs very little, and the small one gets nearer the door.
That is how we would rather have it. Give us the cut-off, the handling agent and the reference and we plan backwards from it with margin. A cut-off missed by ten minutes is not a late delivery, it is tomorrow.
Yes, chilled or frozen, on the one refrigerated vehicle we run. It gets allocated rather than kept spare, so earlier notice helps, particularly out at Maldon, Clacton or Harwich.
Tell us at the point of delivery rather than afterwards, and tell the driver before they leave. Our insurance position is set out when we open an account and it is worth reading before you need it rather than after.
Send us the postcodes and what is moving. You get a price in seconds and a driver within the hour.