Bermondsey works out of arches, and arches have no yard.
Fleetable is a chilled food courier for Bermondsey on contract rather than by the job, running dedicated routes for the bakeries, roasters, cheesemongers and small makers in the railway arches and the kitchens on the high streets around them. An arch has no yard, so loading happens at the kerb and is planned into the schedule and priced per minute. A set driver and a backup on the round, per mile with every cost shown.
The problem
Everything happens at the kerb.
Bermondsey holds one of London's densest clusters of small food production, almost all of it in railway arches along a handful of access roads. The units are close enough to walk between and awkward enough that proximity does not help: no yard, a single roller door onto a shared road, a production run happening in the same space the delivery has to reach, and a vehicle that cannot simply sit there while it is unloaded.
How it works
Proven on one route first
So the round is sequenced by access road rather than by distance, and the kerbside time on a refrigerated drop is treated as a real cost rather than a rounding error — loading and waiting are priced per minute with 15 minutes included on each, so a tight arch is visible in the estimate. The same set driver runs it, which in a cluster like this is the difference between knowing which door on a row of eight is yours and finding out. A named backup sits behind them for the weeks the first driver cannot.
Crossing the river
The crossing decides the vehicle.
Bermondsey sits on the south bank between Tower Bridge and the Rotherhithe approach, and the crossings here are not equally open to every kind of vehicle. Some are height-restricted, some are slow at the wrong hour, and the sensible one for a Luton is not always the sensible one for a small van. So on a round that has to reach the north bank, the crossing is chosen before the vehicle class is.
The congestion charge zone boundary runs close to this area, near enough that whether a round pays depends on which side of it the drops fall. It is shown as its own line when it applies, so it is visible rather than assumed.
What holds the cold chain between an arch and a kitchen door is the subject of chilled food delivery in London, and it is proven on one of your rounds before anything else moves.
Proof
Reliability you can check.
A backup on every route
Primary and backup, always. A sick day never leaves a site short.
Chilled, checked before each job
Food-safe vehicles, kept to temperature the whole route.
Live tracking and proof of delivery
Time and temperature at every drop, with proof your finance team can check.
One named contact
One person who knows your routes — not a call centre.
Drivers checked to your standard. Chilled, food-safe vehicles. Proof at every drop.
Accreditations added as contracts require.
Related
Where to next
FAQ
Questions, answered.
Our unit is an arch with no loading yard. Does that work?
Can one route collect from several arch producers?
Do you deliver from Bermondsey to north of the river?
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