Will It Arrive? Three Event Shipping Questions Every Government Contractor Should Answer First

When your team is representing a federal agency at a conference, the booth is the agency's face for those few days. Nobody on the floor knows or cares which contractor built the display. They notice whether it's there, whether it's on time, and whether it looks the way it should.

After 35 years of shipping exhibit materials for contractors working on behalf of federal agencies, we've found it comes down to three questions. If you can answer all three before the freight moves, the show takes care of itself.

1. Will it arrive on schedule?

Every show has its own deadlines: the advance warehouse window, the first day of direct-to-show delivery, the move-in times for your booth. Those dates are set by the show, not by your carrier, and they don't move because a truck was late.

The fix is to plan backwards from the show's deadlines instead of forwards from whenever the materials happen to be ready. That means:

• Pulling the deadlines from the exhibitor kit as soon as it's published
• Setting the pickup date from those deadlines, with room for weather and traffic
• Confirming where the freight is going (advance warehouse or direct to show) before it leaves your building

We work back from the show's deadlines, not ours. It's the only schedule that matters.

2. Will it arrive at all?

Freight rarely disappears. What disappears is accountability. The shipment gets booked by one person, tracked by another, and handed to a driver who has never heard of either of them. When something goes sideways, nobody knows who to call.

The answer is one owner from pickup to return. At NorthStar Express, a single Shipping Coach owns your shipment start to finish, handling confirmations, labels, bills of lading and Material Handling Agreement reminders, and the same coach stays with you show after show. You always know who to call, and that person already knows your materials, your venues and your deadlines.

3. Will it arrive in one piece?

A damaged display costs you twice: once to repair or replace it, and again in the impression it leaves at the show. Most damage starts with packing, long before the freight is on a truck.

Before anything moves, your coach walks your team through how to pack it. On our end, everything is palletized and plastic-wrapped, so loose boxes and display pieces travel as one secured unit instead of a pile.

Don't have every detail yet? That's normal.

Most contractors come to us without a complete picture, and that's fine. Your coach asks the questions nobody asked you: Where is the pickup? What does the show require? What exactly is moving? And how does it get home afterwards? You tell us what you know, and we fill in the rest together.

You can read more about how we work with government contractors, from a single show to a full year of agency events.

How ready is your next show?

Send us what you know about it, even if it's incomplete, and your Shipping Coach will help you check the schedule, the paperwork, storage and the return trip. Email shippingcoach@northstarexpress.com, call 703-532-0520, or request a quote.

About the author
Rex Houlihan is the CEO of NorthStar Express, a trade show and event shipping company in Falls Church, Virginia that has been shipping to events for 35 years. Rex also created Coast2Coast4ALS, a cross-country bike ride raising awareness and funds for the ALS community. Connect with Rex on LinkedIn.