Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, which means an evening with a great many children on residential streets at exactly the hour the light goes.

This is a short post with one point: if you have deliveries going into a residential area on Saturday, get them finished early.

Why it matters more than it sounds

A loaded tri-axle in a neighbourhood is a considered thing at the best of times. Narrow streets, parked cars on both sides, driveways that appear without warning. The haulers we dispatch handle it every working day.

Saturday evening changes two variables at once. There are far more children on foot than on a normal day, and many of them are wearing costumes that reduce what they can see and how easily they are seen. Dark fabric, masks with narrow eye slots, and the excitement of the evening are not a combination that pairs well with a vehicle that needs a long distance to stop.

Add early dusk and the margin gets thin.

What to do about it

Finish residential runs by mid-afternoon. Not "aim to" — schedule it that way. Anything that slips past four o'clock in a neighbourhood on the 31st should be moved to Monday instead.

Do not leave loaded trucks staged on residential streets. If material has to sit, park it on the site, not on the street.

Tell dispatch what you have going where. If a Saturday delivery is genuinely unavoidable, say so when you book and we will sequence it early in the day.

For the haulers running that day

Nothing you do not already know, but worth saying once a year:

  • Assume a child you cannot see is about to step out from between two parked cars, because on the 31st that is very close to a reasonable assumption.
  • Slow down more than feels necessary in any residential street after about four o'clock.
  • Take the wider route if it avoids a neighbourhood entirely. The extra fuel is not a serious argument on that evening.

And then

This company is built out of people with families in these communities, and a fair number of them will be out on Saturday with their own children. It is a good evening. It is also the one night of the year when the roads and the sidewalks blur in a way that catches people out.

Get the work done early, and enjoy the rest of it.