Alliance Distribution Services: “A day at ADS”

In the lead-up to the 2026 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs), Books+Publishing is inviting the event’s major sponsors to share little-known facts about their organisations, their top tips for booksellers and publishers, and their thoughts on the state of our industry. This week, Alliance Distribution Services (ADS) distribution director Riikka Dunn shares a day in the life of the team distributing books around the country.

This segment is supported by the event sponsors. 

Every book that lands on a bookstore shelf, arrives at a school, or is delivered to a reader’s front door has travelled a carefully coordinated path. At ADS, a bunch of diligent behind-the-scenes people pave that journey – teams who start early and finish late, working together day and night to make sure the right books reach the right customers at exactly the right time.

From the first inbound truck at dawn to the final pallet wrapped at night, here’s what a day inside ADS really looks like.

Receiving

Jessi Taylor, receiving supervisor

While most of the city is still waking up, the receiving department is already up and about.

At 6:15 am, Jessi reviews emails and scans the inbound delivery schedule. Which trucks are due? Which titles are priorities? Which dock doors will be needed? Jessi helps determine what goes where, setting the rhythm of the day before any trucks arrive.

By 6:30 am, the team gathers. They stretch together, listen to safety reminders and hear the day’s task rundown. Traces of their movements gradually appear on their shared whiteboard – imprints of deliveries, priorities and progress.

As time passes, the team follows the whiteboard plans closely, working through tasks in date order, occasionally interrupting this flow for urgent requests or quality control needs.

Throughout the day, trucks arrive – sometimes early, sometimes late, sometimes unexpected. The receiving team checks each delivery against their paperwork. Every title must be accurate, every quantity verified.

Clearly, then, attention to detail is everything. Here’s another example: Before a new title is receipted, it is measured using Cubiscan machines, which reveal books’ dimensions. Accurate dimensions and weight information ensure smooth storage, picking and shipping downstream. If there’s a discrepancy – overages, shortages, or titles not listed on purchase orders – the affected title is quarantined immediately and sent through a quality control process. Nothing reaches the shelves until it is verified as “mint” stock.

Receiving is rarely quiet. The team modulates their movements constantly, dealing with dock congestion, urgent stock requests, labour shifts – whatever is required to keep things flowing. Jessi works closely with the logistics coordinators to resolve issues quickly.

In this busy workflow, the titles arrive.

Order planning

Steven Patane, order planner

The order planning department is also up early.

As an order planner, Steven’s role is versatile, strategic and central to operational flow. By 6:20 am, he’s ensuring all daily orders are correctly configured in the system so warehouse teams can execute them without disruption. If the system isn’t right, the day doesn’t run smoothly.

Throughout the morning, Steven scans for upcoming new release packs, coordinates requests from publishers and ensures that there are correct picking locations available for each title. He ensures high-volume titles are slotted correctly to enable efficient picking and restocking.

Every decision affects throughput, so Steven is also focused on attention to detail. He correlates, confirms and builds waves that help groupings of titles flow effectively through the warehouse, slotting in orders strategically. New release days require special precision, to ensure that titles arrive with each customer on time.

Even his tea breaks – often accompanied by a cup of Lavazza – are short and purposeful.

Before the daily invoice run, Steven releases orders into the system, aligning titles with the correct pick locations, so everything’s poised for fulfilment. By 2:45 pm, he heads home knowing the groundwork for tomorrow’s success is already in place.

Order planning doesn’t always get the spotlight, but it quietly determines how smoothly everything else performs.

Customer service

Megan Donald, customer service advisor

Customer service starts only minutes after these other teams are up and running.

At 6:30 am, Megan is the team’s first voice of the day.

Her morning begins by logging in and reviewing overnight enquiries. Orders, cancellations, stock questions – she sorts and prioritises each task. Urgent matters come first.

By 7:30 am, the phone lines open. Calls range from straightforward tracking requests to more complex investigations. Megan listens carefully, asks the right questions and ensures customers feel heard and reassured.

While much of the distribution team works behind the scenes, Megan focuses on clear and professional communication, helping everyone understand what’s going on when they need to know. Customer service is the bridge between bookselling customers and the wider business.

Megan liaises daily with:

• Publishers, to confirm stock availability and publication dates
• Warehouse teams, regarding dispatch queries
• Accounts, for billing clarifications
• Shipping, for order discrepancies.

Nothing can slip through the cracks, here, either. Megan records every interaction diligently.

After a quick lunch at 11:00 am, Megan plunges straight back into balancing emails, calls and internal coordination, the rhythm of each day depending on what other teams need actioned. Before finishing at 2:30 pm, Megan reviews her outstanding tasks and ensures clear handovers, so that others can pick up where she left off.

Pick/pack

Kim Powell, Warehouse 2IC, and the pick/pack team

In receiving, the titles arrive. In pick/pack, they move through the systems, readying to make their journey to those who ordered them.

This is an active job, and so, once again, it requires attention to detail – here with an emphasis on the team’s safety and speed.

Before the shift begins, Kim completes readiness checks:

• Switching on air compressors and conveyors
• Pre-checking equipment
• Confirming PPE availability
• Stocking induction and dispatch stations
• Reviewing daily targets
• Identifying priority orders.

At 6:30 am, the team gathers for stretches and a stand-up briefing. Like the receiving team, they share safety reminders. As the energy builds, they also take note of the day’s volume goals and any special handling notes. Then everyone moves to their zones.

Orders begin at induction, where cartons are built and labels generated. Label accuracy is critical; the label controls the carton’s entire journey through conveyor systems and transport networks.

Pickers log into picking zones, then scan into cartons, and then they scan ISBNs to verify each title before picking. They inspect every book for quality before it’s carefully placed inside a box. Each day, pickers encounter the massive variety of works circulating through Australia’s publishing and bookselling industries – paperbacks, hardcovers, box sets, textbooks, children’s books, posters, bookmarks, the list goes on.

As the day continues, pickers move constantly, each often surpassing 20,000 steps in a shift.

The cartons are travelling, too. Once cartons travel through all zones, they move to dispatch. If there’s a weight discrepancy, the quality control team verifies every book before releasing it onward.

At 2:45 pm, the team docks their scanners and reviews their key performance indicators, and then they provide a detailed handover to the evening teams.

Here, too, accuracy is non-negotiable. Each carton represents trust.

Replenishment

Chloe Rule, replenishment supervisor, and the replenishment team

As the morning shift winds down, the replenishment team gears up.

At 2:55 pm, Chloe receives a handover from the morning teams. Once these teams upload their replenishment tasks, the evening begins in earnest.

Chloe’s team ensures stock is in the right pick bays for the next day’s orders. High-demand titles are reviewed, as they might need to be handled by some of ADS’s larger machines, such as turret trucks.

They sticker promotional stock and position stock for campaigns. Visitor access ends, so they lock external gates, but the inside is still far from quiet.

By 5:00 pm, consolidation begins, particularly for orders that have been placed in full carton quantities, on which ADS promises a 24-hour turnaround time. On busy nights, up to 6000 books are consolidated to support the next morning’s efficiency.

From 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm, the team works quickly. Shelves are stocked, damaged stock scrapped, forklifts charged, radios powered down.

At 10:55 pm, end-of-day emails are sent to ensure seamless communication for the next shift, when the cycle will begin again tomorrow morning.

Even within the behind-the-scenes world of distribution, replenishment operates in the background. But we have this team to thank when the next morning starts seamlessly.

Dispatch

Tanaya Millar, dispatch supervisor, and the dispatch team

Meanwhile, at various times of the day, shipments are heading out on the next stage of their journey. Dispatch is the last link in the chain, and accuracy here protects the company’s reputation.

Before work begins, this team stages the pallets, checks machines, prepares labels (again, accuracy is everything), and verifies pallet counts.

As cartons arrive from the sortation lines, this team stages them onto the correct pallets. Each pallet is wrapped and carries a label indicating its destination state. Every pallet is checked and signed off by 2 employees to ensure accuracy.

Meanwhile, export orders – air and sea – are processed weekly with additional documentation.

At the end of the day, once the final carton arrives, the team conducts a systematic check to confirm everything planned for dispatch is wrapped, labelled and staged correctly. Data is transmitted electronically to transportation partners.

Dispatch is the final safeguard between warehouse and customer, ensuring orders leave on time, complete and in perfect condition.

One seamless system

Individually, each role is distinct.

Together, they form a single, coordinated system:

• Receiving ensures accuracy at entry
• Order planning structures the flow
• Pick/pack executes with precision
• Replenishment prepares for tomorrow
• Customer service supports every interaction
• Dispatch delivers on the promise.

Every shift overlaps. Every handover matters. Every detail counts.

Behind every successful delivery is collaboration, communication and care. This involves early mornings, late evenings, thousands of steps, constant scanning, problem-solving and teamwork.

And at the centre of it all is a shared purpose: making it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity.

Because at ADS, we’re not just moving cartons. We’re moving stories.

The Australian Book Industry Awards are presented for achievements in bringing Australian books to readers. 

Books+Publishing is the Australian book industry’s number-one source for news, opinions, pre-publication reviews, jobs, and advertisements.

Category: ABIA