Your products, delivered like they matter

Every dealer order leaves our floor in crating designed for what is inside it, not a generic box and hope. Awning assemblies are long, and their arms and front bars do not tolerate being used as levers by a forklift. Motorized screens ship with their roller tubes, side tracks, and bottom bars secured so nothing shifts in transit. Fabrics travel protected from abrasion and moisture, because a scuffed fabric on arrival is a callback before the install even starts.

The crating standard exists for one reason: your crew should open the crate and start installing, not start repairing. When a unit arrives and the first thing your installer notices is how well it was packed, that confidence carries into the whole job, and it is the manufacturer telling your crew, without saying a word, that the details matter here. Dealers who have received product from other suppliers know the difference immediately; the ones who have only ever received ours assume it is normal. It is not normal. It is a choice.

Fragile and high-value components, motors, control units, sensors, LED assemblies, travel in dedicated protective packaging inside the main crate, cushioned and isolated from the heavier structural parts. If your order includes multiple units for one job, they are crated and labeled by unit so your crew stages the right assembly at the right opening without playing detective in the driveway.

Dealer orders ship via scheduled freight with liftgate-equipped trucks as the standard, no forklift required at your end for most deliveries. When your order leaves our floor, you get the shipment notification with carrier details and tracking. Before arrival, the carrier provides a delivery-window heads-up so someone is there to receive it. The sequence is defined and it does not change: notification, window, delivery, confirmation.

If anything changes in transit, a weather delay, a reroute, a missed window, the dealer team tells you before you have to ask. You should never learn about a delay from your customer calling to ask where their awning is. That standard sounds basic until you have lived through a supplier who goes quiet for a week; we would rather deliver bad news early than silence that forces you to guess. Your install schedule is built on our word, so our word has to be reliable.

Lead times are communicated honestly per order and depend on the specification and current build schedule, the same discipline described in how dealer ordering works. Plan your install calendar from the dates we give you, not from the dates you wish we gave you; we will tell you what is real, and we will hit what we tell you. If your timeline is tight, talk to the dealer team before you promise the customer a date, we will tell you honestly what is possible.

Shop delivery is the default for most dealers: the order arrives at your facility, your crew inspects it at receiving, and you stage it for the install on your own schedule. This is the right choice when you want eyes on every unit before it goes near a customer, when you are combining multiple jobs into one shipment, or when the job site has access constraints that make direct delivery awkward, steep driveways, gated communities with delivery windows, or neighborhoods where a freight truck cannot stage.

Jobsite-direct delivery skips a handling step: the crate goes from our floor to the customer's property, and your crew meets it there. On larger projects, multi-unit screen packages, whole-home awning sets, eliminating the unload-reload cycle saves real labor and real risk, because every extra handling is another chance to scuff something. Include the delivery address and a site contact with someone available to receive when you submit the specification, and flag any site constraints up front: low bridges, weight-restricted roads, or HOAs with commercial-vehicle rules.

Dealers with steady volume often run a hybrid: routine orders to the shop, big multi-unit jobs direct to site. There is no wrong answer as long as the choice is deliberate. What does not work is improvising at the last minute, a jobsite delivery needs the address, the contact, and the constraints in the specification before the order builds, not in a phone call the day it ships.

When the truck arrives, the receiving routine is short and non-negotiable. First, count: crates and packages against the packing list before anything is opened. Second, inspect the exterior of every crate for impact damage, crushed corners, punctures, broken banding, water staining. Third, note anything, anything, on the delivery receipt before you sign it. A clean signature on a damaged delivery is the most expensive autograph in this business.

Then unpack with the specification in hand: verify each unit against its configuration, width, projection, fabric, options, and confirm motors, controls, sensors, and hardware kits are present and correct. Photograph the unboxing; those photos are your evidence file if anything is wrong, and they cost you ninety seconds. Check fabric for abrasion or moisture, check powder-coat for chips at the crate contact points, and cycle-test motors before the install day if your shop has the bench space.

Dealers who run this checklist religiously catch the rare problem at receiving, when it is a phone call and a replacement part, instead of at the install, when it is a rescheduled customer and a wasted crew day. Train every person who might ever sign for a delivery, including the shop hand and the Saturday fill-in. The checklist lives or dies on the least-trained receiver.

Freight damage is rare and it is never zero, anyone who tells you otherwise has not shipped enough. What separates a good supplier is not the absence of damage, it is the response. Ours: note it on the delivery receipt, photograph everything before unpacking further, and contact the dealer team the same day by text at (909) 325-3110 or email at dealer@ajshadesinc.com. The sooner we know, the faster the replacement moves.

Concealed damage, the crate looks fine but the unit inside is not, follows the same process with one addition: stop unpacking, document the condition as found, and tell us promptly. Do not install a damaged unit hoping the customer will not notice; they will notice, and then the problem is yours instead of the carrier’s. We work the claim with the carrier while prioritizing your replacement parts, because your install calendar does not pause for paperwork.

Warranty shipments run on a separate, faster track: the 15-year coverage on retractable awnings and motorized power screens includes the parts logistics, and warranty parts ship with priority handling. You are not paying freight to fix a factory issue, and you are not waiting in the standard queue behind new orders. Text (909) 325-3110 to open a warranty shipment, the dealer team treats a down unit at a customer’s home with the urgency it deserves.

Dealers sell AJ Shades products nationwide, product-only and wholesale, fulfilled by trusted local contractors. AJ Shades itself installs only in Southern California (San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties). Freight and delivery follow the same geography: we ship dealer orders anywhere in the country; our own install crews operate only inside our five-county footprint. We never promise installation outside that footprint, and we never ask our dealers to name contractors on our behalf.

This matters for delivery planning because the receiving and installation responsibility sits with you, the dealer, in your territory, which is exactly why the crating, the checklist, and the claims process above exist. We engineer the product and the logistics; you own the last fifty feet and the customer relationship. That division of labor is the whole dealer model, and the freight operation is built to make your half easy.