A delivery address in Montréal is not always where the front door is. A parcel for "1236" may belong to a flat reached by a spiral staircase from the sidewalk. A florist may be told to use the lane. A buzzer may carry a name that appears nowhere in the order. None of this is unusual to someone who lives here; all of it costs a visit when it is missing from the delivery instructions.
These are working notes on the parts of the city that most often trip up a delivery, and on what a retailer, caterer or florist can say at the time of the order to keep the driver from guessing.
Plexes and their outdoor staircases
The duplex, triplex and fourplex, collectively "plexes", make up a large share of residential Montréal, and they are built in a way that confuses systems designed for single-family houses. The upper units are commonly reached by a staircase on the facade, straight or spiral, rather than through a shared lobby. The lowest unit may sit at garden level (rez-de-jardin) a few steps below the sidewalk.
Each unit often carries its own civic number, so one building can answer to 1234, 1236 and 1238 on the same street. A customer in the second-floor flat might write "1236" or "1234, apt 2" depending on who last delivered to them. The driver benefits from seeing both the civic number and the floor.
Two practical consequences. First, anything heavy is a carry: a customer ordering a bookcase for a third-floor flat has a staircase, often a narrow one, between the van and the door, and that should be known before the delivery, not discovered at it. Furniture and home goods delivery depends on that detail more than any other category. Second, in winter these staircases are exactly as slippery as they look; see winter delivery in Montréal.
Lanes and back doors
Many Montréal blocks have a lane behind them. It is where bins go, where residents park, and where a good number of back doors open. Some lanes have been planted and furnished by neighbours as ruelles vertes and are as much a shared yard as a road.
The trouble is that the lane door is sometimes the real entrance and sometimes a locked gate to a yard. A customer who always uses the back door may give it as the delivery point without realizing a driver cannot tell which side to use. If your customers tend to want the lane, give them a field to say so; if they do not, the front door is the safe default.
One-way streets, bike lanes and the walk from the van
A large part of the central city runs one way, which makes the approach to an address a one-direction problem: miss the turn and the route becomes a loop around the block. Add bike lanes that cannot be blocked, fire hydrants, and signs for residential parking, and the legal place to stop is often not at the door. The real delivery time includes the walk from where the vehicle can legally stop.
This is also why a "15-minute window" on a downtown street can be less reliable than a two-hour window in the suburbs. It is not a matter of driver skill. The parking and the access are the variables. If you want to know how a courier plans around them, ask how stops are sequenced; multi-stop route planning explains why the order of stops matters as much as the count.
Condos, towers and commercial buildings
Larger buildings move the problem inside. A concierge or a locked lobby means the delivery depends on whether the recipient has told the building to expect it. Some buildings require a booking for the freight elevator or loading dock, restrict deliveries to certain hours, or want the delivery to go to a package room instead of the unit door. Downtown offices can be one address with fifty tenants.
For these, the most useful single piece of information is a named contact on site and a phone number that will be answered. A suite number and a floor are the minimum; a loading-dock instruction is better. For business deliveries, a commercial receiving address with posted hours is worth more than a head-office address.
Names, abbreviations and the Est/Ouest trap
Addresses on the island are written in two languages, and a system that expects one will mis-sort the other. Avenue du Parc is also "Park Avenue". Boulevard Saint-Laurent is also "St. Lawrence" or "The Main". A street may be typed Saint-Denis, St-Denis, St Denis or rue Saint Denis in the same list of customers.
The compass suffix matters more than any of these. Streets that cross Boulevard Saint-Laurent are numbered outward in both directions, so 1200 rue Sherbrooke Ouest and 1200 rue Sherbrooke Est are different places, kilometres apart. French writes O. for ouest and English writes W. for west, and a form that drops the letter entirely sends the driver to a coin flip. Make the direction a required part of the address wherever the street runs east to west.
Off the island
Laval, Longueuil and the South Shore, and the West Island are different again: more single-family houses, more driveways, more gated condo complexes, and fewer places where a parking space is a problem. The variable becomes bridges and tunnels. A delivery that is ten minutes from the warehouse by distance may be forty by the clock at rush hour, and the bridge is the reason. Construction season, from spring to fall, adds lane closures to nearly every route. Our coverage page lists the areas we serve; a delivery outside the usual zone should be raised when you request a quote.
| Building type | The detail that saves a visit | What goes wrong without it |
|---|---|---|
| Duplex, triplex, fourplex | Civic number of the unit, floor, and which entrance (front stairs, lane, or garden level) | Driver rings the wrong flat or cannot find the entrance |
| House on a lane | Front door or back door, and whether the back gate is locked | Parcel left at the wrong side, or a second trip |
| Condo or apartment tower | Unit, buzzer name, concierge instructions, and whether a booking is required | Delivery refused at the desk, or a wait in the lobby |
| Office tower | Suite, floor, named contact on site, and loading-dock hours | Parcel stuck at security, delivered to the wrong tenant |
| Commercial receiving | Receiving hours, dock or door number, and a contact name | Arrival when nobody is there to sign |
| Suburban house | Gate code if any, and whether to leave at the door | A re-attempt that was avoidable |
Capturing these costs a few extra fields at checkout. It is the same thinking as reducing failed delivery attempts, with the geography filled in: the less the driver has to infer, the fewer visits it takes.
Planning deliveries across Montréal and the surrounding area? Tell us your delivery areas when you request a quote and we will confirm what is possible.