The 90% prevention principle. About 90% of failed deliveries are preventable with better booking discipline. The remaining 10% are weather, vehicle mechanical, traffic incidents, and other genuinely unpredictable events. Focus the prevention work on the 90%. Booking checklist: verified pickup address with contact name and phone (not just the company's main number); verified drop address including suite, floor, apartment number; verified recipient name and phone (call them at booking if you haven't confirmed they're expecting the delivery); confirmed vehicle requirement (cargo van, Sprinter, box truck, liftgate yes/no, two-person crew yes/no); confirmed building access requirements at destination (COI required, freight elevator booking required, doorman protocol, dock vs. street); confirmed time window (when can the receiver actually accept the delivery, and what's their cutoff). Send dispatch this information at the time of booking, not when the truck is already in motion. The booking process is where prevention happens; the in-transit phase is where recovery happens; the in-transit phase is more expensive than the booking phase by an order of magnitude.

Specific prevention measures for the most common failure modes. For address problems: copy-paste the address from the recipient's email or text message; don't transcribe by ear; verify with a quick reply or phone call before booking. For recipient-not-available: text or call the recipient with a 30-60 minute ETA window before the driver arrives; this single step prevents most "recipient not home" failures. For building access: confirm COI requirements before booking, send dispatch the building's COI template, schedule freight elevator booking before the truck rolls. For high-rise commercial deliveries, reference our Manhattan high-rise delivery guide and COI guide. For wrong-vehicle failures: confirm the load size, weight, and offload requirements at booking; if you're unsure about vehicle sizing, send dispatch a photo and the destination type. For window missed: confirm the receiver's hard cutoff time (when does their dock close, when does the freight elevator window end, when does the construction site stop accepting deliveries, when does the courthouse close); work backward to your latest possible pickup time.

Carrier-side prevention factors. Asset-based fleet (in-house drivers, owned vehicles, in-house dispatch) prevents marketplace-app failure modes. Live GPS tracking on every vehicle prevents "lost driver" failures. Photo PoD at every step prevents most "where's my package" failures. Recipient signature verification prevents wrong-recipient failures. Same-driver custody on legal, medical, and high-value deliveries prevents chain-of-custody failures. Building COI workflow prevents access failures. Two-person crew availability prevents wrong-vehicle failures. If your current carrier is generating regular failed deliveries, the underlying problem is usually structural — they don't have the operational discipline to prevent failures, and adding more delivery attempts to a broken process doesn't fix the process. The right response is usually to switch carriers, not to add another redelivery attempt to a system that doesn't work. Detail in our why NYC businesses are switching courier companies in 2026 blog and our courier service vs gig apps NYC blog. For pricing context across reliable carrier alternatives, see our 2026 NYC courier pricing guide; for new-business setup with delivery built in correctly from the start, our new business delivery setup guide.