Public Holiday Delivery Strategy: A 5-Step Playbook for Operations Managers

This is your complete playbook for Operations Managers to design a public holiday delivery strategy that turns chaos into a competitive advantage in Australia.

Walter Scremin CEO at Ontime

22 October 2025

Male And Female Workers In Logistics Distribution Warehouse Using Digital Tablet

That familiar email lands in your inbox: “Upcoming King’s Birthday Long Weekend: Service Disruptions.” Your stomach drops. You remember the chaos from Easter. It was a feeling of helplessness as delivery promises evaporated and angry calls from customers flooded your phone.

That sinking feeling is an industry standard, but it does not have to define your operations. For over two decades, I’ve worked side-by-side with Operations Managers across Australia to replace that chaos with absolute control. I’m Walter Scremin, CEO of Ontime Delivery Solutions, and this is the 5-step playbook we use to build resilient, high-performance delivery operations.

This is not theory. It is a practical, strategic framework you can implement today to turn your biggest operational headache into your greatest strength.

What This Playbook Covers:

Step 1: How to Calculate the True Cost of Holiday Delivery Chaos
Step 2: How to Assess Your Fleet’s Holiday Resilience
Step 3: A 72-Hour Checklist for Public Holiday Delivery Preparation
Step 4: Managing Customer Expectations Over Public Holidays
Step 5: Creating a Year-Round Delivery Advantage from Your Holiday Strategy.

Let’s get you started on building an operation that thrives under pressure.

Step 1: How to Calculate the True Impact of Peak Period Chaos

The first step to gaining control is to stop thinking about peak period stress as a feeling and start treating it as a number. The philosophy here is simple: you cannot fix what you do not measure. This framework is designed to help you calculate the “True Impact of Chaos,” giving you the hard data needed to get buy-in from your leadership team for real change in your logistics planning.

How to Calculate Your True Impact of Chaos:

After the next peak period, sit down with your finance and admin teams and answer these four questions. Do not estimate; use real numbers from your invoices and timesheets.

Impact Category	The Critical Question	The Bottom-Line Impact
Direct Financial Impact	What were our exact peak period delivery surcharges from carriers, plus the total of all credits or refunds we issued for service failures?	With global shipping expenses continuing to pressure local prices, these surcharges are often much higher than you think.
Wasted Labour	How many dispatch and admin hours were spent on non-productive tasks like chasing late shipments, managing complaints, and rescheduling failed deliveries?	In Australia, penalty rates on certain days can reach 250% of the normal wage, turning wasted hours into a massive financial drain.
Contractual Penalties	Which deliveries were late? By how many hours or days? Which clients were affected, and did we breach any of our formal promises (Service Level Agreements)?	A Service Level Agreement is your formal promise to a client. Breaching it not only has financial repercussions but directly threatens the future of that contract.
Reputational Damage	Did we lose any clients or receive contract threats? Did we get negative online reviews or formal written complaints?	With 85% of Australian shoppers citing reliable delivery as the most important factor in trusting a brand, the long-term damage of a single peak period failure is immense for your customers.

This simple calculation turns a vague frustration into a hard number. That number is your business case, so that you can walk into your next management meeting with a data-driven argument for investing in a more resilient delivery model.

Step 2: How to Assess Your Fleet’s Resilience

Peak period failures are symptoms of a deeper problem: a lack of resilience in your delivery model. The philosophy here is that resilience is not a vague goal; it is a set of measurable capabilities. I learned this the hard way two decades ago when a single truck breakdown on the Tuesday after Easter cost us a major client. That is when I developed this simple matrix to ensure it never happened again.

Use it to honestly assess your current delivery model on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = Very Weak, 5 = Very Strong).

Resiliency Factor	Scoring Guide (1 = High Risk, 5 = High Control)
Vehicle Redundancy (Your Score: __)	If your primary vehicle breaks down, what is your guaranteed access to a like-for-like replacement? (1 = None, it’s a crisis; 5 = Immediate access to a managed reserve fleet).
Staff Availability (Your Score: __)	If a team member calls in sick on the first day back, what is your guaranteed access to a trained, licensed backup? This is crucial when ad-hoc services are limited. (1 = None, we scramble; 5 = A professional standby pool is available).
Maintenance & Compliance (Your Score: __)	Who is responsible for all preventative maintenance, registration, and insurance, especially under National Heavy Vehicle Regulator guidelines? (1 = It’s all on my team; 5 = It’s completely managed by a partner offering dedicated services).
Cost Predictability (Your Score: __)	Are your delivery expenses fixed and predictable, or are they vulnerable to surprise surcharges and variable peak rates? (1 = Highly variable; 5 = Fixed, predictable monthly fee).

At this point, you might be looking at your total score and feeling overwhelmed. Do not be. For most in-house fleets, a score of 8 to 12 is normal. The matrix is not a judgment; it’s a map. It is designed to show you exactly where your biggest vulnerability lies. Identify your single lowest-scoring area (for example, a ‘1’ in Staff Availability) and make that your number one priority to fix, so that you focus your limited resources on the single change that will deliver the biggest improvement in your operational resilience and fleet management.

Step 3: A 72-Hour Checklist for Peak Period Preparation

The core philosophy here is to shift the chaos. Instead of letting the inevitable pressure during this season explode on the first day back, this checklist allows you to control the pressure by front-loading your preparation into a calm, disciplined, and repeatable process.

How to Implement the 72-Hour Checklist:

This is not about reinventing your process; it is about instilling a non-negotiable timeline that turns weekend stress into predictable readiness.

72 Hours Out (The Lock-Down): All customer orders are finalised and locked. Your team confirms final volumes with your major clients and provides them with their final pre-break delivery ETA.
48 Hours Out (The Roster & Vehicle Check): All personnel rosters, including your designated standby staff, are finalised and published. All primary vehicles undergo a mandatory pre-trip safety and maintenance check.
24 Hours Out (The Staging): All items for the first post-break delivery wave are picked, packed, and staged in the dispatch area. This helps manage your inventory. All run sheets are printed and organised. The goal is an empty floor and a full dispatch zone.
Hour 1, Day 1 (The Launch): The dispatch manager holds a 10-minute briefing with all team members. Vehicles are loaded and wheels are rolling within the first hour of operations.

This disciplined process ensures that your first day back is about calm execution, not chaotic organisation, so that you can hit the ground running and fulfill your promises to customers with timely deliveries from the very first hour.

Is your delivery operation feeling out of control?

A free, no-obligation analysis can find the root cause and show you how to fix it. Call 1300 778 919.

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Step 4: Managing Expectations for a Delivery Over Peak Periods

In my experience, nothing erodes a client’s confidence faster than radio silence. The philosophy is simple but powerful: in the absence of information, your customers will always assume the worst. This proactive communications plan allows you to take control of the narrative, build trust, and prevent inbound complaint calls by getting ahead of their questions.

Audience	The Message	The Channel	The Timing
All B2B Customers	Official Closure & Peak Shipping Cut-Off Dates	Email, Newsletter & Website Banner	1 Week Prior
‘Tier 1’ Key Accounts	A personal confirmation of their final pre-break delivery schedule and first post-break ETA	Phone Call from their Account Manager	72 Hours Prior
All Customers with a Pending Delivery	A real-time tracking link and automated delivery ETA	Automated SMS/Email	On the Day of Dispatch

This simple process reinforces your reputation for professionalism and proactive service, so that your brand becomes known for reliability, even during the most challenging shipping season of the year.

Step 5: Creating a Year-Round Advantage with Resilient Delivery Services

This is the most critical step. The philosophy is that a system stress-tested during a peak period is a high-performance system that can become your greatest competitive advantage every other day of the year. With the Australia courier market valued at around $19 billion AUD and the e-commerce sector generating over $60 billion AUD, rock-solid reliability is no longer a bonus. It is how you win.

How to Weaponise Your Reliability: A 3-Step Process

Solidify Your Performance Data: After successfully navigating a peak period using this playbook, you will have hard data on your on-time departure and delivery rates. This is your proven logistics capability.
Turn Performance into a Promise: Take your proven 95%+ on-time performance and turn it into your new, standard Service Level Agreement for all your high-value customers.
Use That Promise to Win New Business: Instruct your sales team to lead with this reliability guarantee. While your competitors and their couriers are making excuses, your team is selling certainty and superior management of customer demands.

This process transforms your delivery function from a reactive cost centre into a proven, marketable asset, so that you can actively win and retain high-value clients who are tired of their current supplier’s unreliability.

To get the hard data needed for a rock-solid business case, a detailed analysis can be invaluable. You can explore a professional diagnostic tool or find general resources at the Australian Government’s business planning portal.

Your Peak Period Delivery Questions Answered

What is the biggest risk to my delivery schedule during an Australian peak period?

The single biggest risk is operational paralysis caused by a lack of guaranteed resources. This typically manifests in two ways: staff absenteeism on the first day back from a long weekend like Easter or King’s Birthday, and the unavailability of ad-hoc delivery services who are either closed or at full capacity. Without dedicated personnel and a backup plan, a single point of failure can halt your entire dispatch operation, leading to significant delays and breached Service Level Agreements.

How far in advance should we set and communicate peak period delivery cut-off dates?

As a best practice for managing customer expectations around holiday deliveries, you should communicate your cut-off dates at least one to two weeks in advance. For major periods like Christmas, four weeks is ideal. The specific cut-off date itself depends on your service level:

Metro Same-City (e.g., Sydney to Sydney): The last working day before the closure is a safe cut-off.
Interstate Metro (e.g., Melbourne to Brisbane): Allow 3-5 business days before the shutdown period.
Regional/Remote Areas: Allow 7-10 business days before the break to account for on-forwarder delays.

What’s the main difference between a day courier and a dedicated service during busy times?

The main difference is the tradeoff between cost and control. A standard holiday courier offers a lower baseline fee for ad-hoc use but operates on a shared network, meaning you have no guaranteed capacity, are subject to significant surcharges, and have limited control over service levels. In contrast, a dedicated service involves a higher baseline investment but provides a guaranteed, exclusive-use fleet of vehicles and staff. This gives you complete control over your schedule, fixed pricing without surcharges, and resilience against common failures like personnel or vehicle shortages for a critical holidays delivery.

How can I justify the investment in a dedicated delivery strategy to my leadership?

To justify the investment in a dedicated strategy, you must present it as a risk-mitigation and value-add measure, not an expense. Use the “True Impact of Chaos” framework from Step 1 to calculate the total financial effect of past failures. This includes not just the obvious surcharges for an express delivery, but also the expense of wasted labour, refunds to customers, and potential contract losses from breached Service Level Agreements. Presenting this hard data proves that the price of inaction is significantly higher than the investment in a reliable, dedicated system that can provide a delivery on time, every time, even when you need delivery express.