Why is my furniture taking so long to get to my dealer? I thought it was Quick Ship?

If you have been following the news of late, you know that a top story is a shortage of truck drivers across the nation, and it affects the furniture industry just like other ones.

I have been using Murrow's Transfer for over 30 years now to haul my upholstery to my store from North Carolina. It's a 7 hour drive to the factories by car - just to give you a reference point. Murrow's sends in a truck into a supplier, picks it all the pieces they have that day for all dealers across the country (that will use Murrows) then takes it back to their yard in High Point, NC, unloads and separates it by region, then its reloaded for delivery to that region. Tommy Gardner is my guy - he's been bringing me furniture since the day he started 28 years ago. Tommy has a key to my warehouse - he just drops off everything and calls me when he does, that way he can get in there at 4 a.m. instead of having to wait for me to unlock and unload. We have a near perfect system that we have evolved over the last quarter century.

Murrow's used to take 5 days to get furniture to my store from the day of pickup. Now that has gone to three to four times that (15 to 20 days) because they can't get shuttle drivers, they are all leaving to go work for the major truck lines that pay more. Last week, Murrows was sixty trailers behind. That's right (60). That's a lot of furniture! The other specialized furniture carriers (Shelba Johnson, etc.) are likewise So they could raise the pay, but that comes back to dealers in the form of high freight charges which get passed onto the consumer as higher prices. They are reluctant to do that, but it may come to that. It probably will. Eight years ago it cost me about $ 60 to land a sofa to my store. Today its $ 125. I can see rates going to $ 160 or so pretty easily.

With the shortage of drivers, things are just taking longer to arrive. So that three week quick ship you are ordering is probably going to take five weeks, maybe six, before your dealer has it. That's not likely to ease up anytime soon, so allow for that ship time when planning for your new furniture to arrive.