How does pickup actually work?
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Brunel drivers come to your location every morning between 7am and 10am. In your merchant portal, you set a cutoff — up to 9am — which is the latest an order can be placed and still make that day's pickup run. Everything packed and ready by your cutoff gets collected. Shipments are then sorted by delivery zone directly in the portal, and handed off to the driver assigned to that zone. No drop-off, no depot trip, no scrambling to meet someone else's schedule. Every order received in the last 24 hours — overnight, early morning, all of it — ships the same day we pick up.
How does onboarding actually work?
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A 20-minute conversation first — we look at your daily volume, your GTA customer concentration, and your current carrier setup. If there's fit, we send a written service agreement and connect your store via our integration. You set your order cutoff in the merchant portal. Most merchants are live within a week — and shipping their first same-day Brunel run shortly after.
Are there minimum volume requirements?
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Brunel is built for GTA-focused brands shipping between 10 and 300 orders per day. If you're shipping fewer than 10 a day consistently, we're likely not the right fit yet. If you're above 300, let's talk — we can work through what that looks like.
What does pricing look like?
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One all-in rate per shipment. No fuel surcharge. No residential surcharge. No peak-season fees. Pricing is agreed in writing and doesn't change mid-contract. Get in touch and we'll share specifics based on your volume and parcel profile.
What happens when a delivery fails?
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Our drivers are owner-operators with a financial incentive to complete the delivery — not abandon it. That's why our first-attempt rate targets 99%+ vs. the ~75–80% industry average. If a delivery genuinely can't complete, you see it flagged in your dashboard in real time — before your customer emails support.
Do you handle returns?
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Yes. Returns workflows vary by brand — volume, packaging, condition policies all matter. We'd rather build something that fits your business than publish a generic process. Tell us how returns work for you and we'll design around it.
What if I ship outside the GTA?
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Use Brunel for your GTA volume — likely the most valuable segment of your Canadian customer base — and continue with your current carrier for everything else. Most merchants run a hybrid model. Expansion coverage is planned for 2027.
How is this different from Canada Post, Purolator, or GLS?
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Those carriers require you to bring parcels to them, on a schedule that was designed for B2B bulk — not DTC merchants. Miss the depot cutoff and your customer's order slips to the next day. Brunel comes to you, every morning, and collects every order placed in the last 24 hours. Same-day delivery for your customer, without you changing how you pack or where you ship from.
Is my customer data safe?
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Your customer data is yours. We use it to deliver your packages. We don't run a marketplace, we don't sell to your customers, and we don't mine your order data to build competing products. That's the entire point of not being Amazon.
