Big and bulky goods have been a thorn in the side of last-mile delivery for decades, requiring multiple local couriers for fast delivery or racking up colossal handling and dimensional weight fees to move them through more traditional delivery pipelines.
However, as customers increasingly shift their purchases online, their delivery expectations don’t always account for the differences between standard parcels and oversized items. The reality is that shoppers want to receive their purchases quickly and conveniently, regardless of the difficulties the sender may face in making that happen.
As a result, many big and bulky deliveries fail to meet consumers’ expectations. Research by DispatchTrack found consumers particularly value on-time delivery (66%), order accuracy (57%), item condition (41%) and quick delivery (47%) for oversized goods. But 44% experienced having big and bulky items delivered outside the scheduled time window — a genuine inconvenience when it’s something you want to be home to receive. As a result, 61% said it is unlikely that they would purchase from the retailer again.
Many big and bulky purchases are big-ticket items, so losing customers from a poor oversized delivery experience costs retailers short-term profits and repeat business.
The Logistical Challenges of Big and Bulky
Those delivery failures are often caused by the friction-filled, disjointed path most big and bulky items traverse from the fulfillment center to the customer’s doorstep. Due to the special handling required, parcel carriers often impose early cut-off times and extra fees ahead of the multi-handoff journey through the delivery chain, with limited tracking and increased risk of damage at each step. Oversized items get there when they get there, which can be highly inconvenient for the customer.
Stitching together a network of local couriers brings its own issues in visibility, vendor management and an inconsistent customer experience.
It’s not just a delivery problem. Staging orders containing oversized items for delivery in fulfillment centers requires costly extra space, handling and human resources.
Respondents cited a long list of these big and bulky logistics pain points in a recent survey of retailers, e-tailers and other businesses by Roadie and Studio ID. Early cut-off times for oversized items (47%) were their most vexing issue, followed closely by the complexity of managing multiple carriers to cover their entire market (45%) and the extra resources required to process oversized goods orders in the DC/FC (39%). Many (37%) also cited the longer delivery times for oversized goods deliveries.
Solving Big and Bulky Delivery Woes
After years of tolerating a big and bulky delivery system that doesn’t meet expectations, retailers are finding new ways to sidestep traditional approaches to create last-mile oversized deliveries that work for their logistics operations and their customers.
On-demand delivery has replaced delays and uncertainty with an ultrafast home delivery alternative that facilitates customers’ desired speed, tracking, alerts and communication capabilities. Consumers told DispatchTrack that when it comes to big and bulky goods, they like certainty and visibility: 91% want order tracking capabilities, and communication with the driver is important.
RoadieXL™ was developed to meet these needs — and more. RoadieXL™ leverages a network of independent gig drivers with the vehicles and equipment needed to whisk big and bulky goods directly to your customer’s front door, up to 100 miles from the pickup location. This means you can offer narrow delivery windows so customers can quickly receive their oversized items at a time that works for them.
Not limited to speed alone, functionalities including alerts, live tracking and the ability to communicate directly with drivers mean you can check all the boxes that consumers require for a positive delivery experience. That’s why retailers such as BJ’s Wholesale Club turn to RoadieXL™ to offer same-day delivery service for products like patio sets, grills and televisions.
Bringing Efficient Logistics to Big and Bulky
Retailers are solving the other half of the big and bulky delivery challenge by changing the way they fulfill orders. Instead of picking and staging orders for oversized items in their facilities, they’re consolidating those orders into one container and turning that over to a cross-docking facility. Once there, the products are sorted and reloaded directly onto outgoing vehicles for delivery.
Research conducted by Roadie and Supply Chain Dive’s studioID found that 62% of those who outsourced the cross-docking of their big and bulky goods saw increased productivity, while 46% increased efficiency and freed up space in their facilities.
Roadie recently announced its own cross-docking solution, RoadieXD™. RoadieXD™ uses cross-docks to enable rapid local delivery of big and bulky goods through the Roadie platform. With this model, retailers can offer same-day delivery across a wide range of SKUs with minimal cost and complexity, up to 100 miles from each of the rapidly expanding roster of Roadie cross-dock facilities around the U.S.
UPS customers enjoy special benefits when using RoadieXD™, including unified billing and complete visibility with UPS tracking milestones using existing UPS integrations.
Retail x Roadie: A Powerful Combination
Retailers can leverage RoadieXL™ or RoadieXD™ independently to address specific parts of the big and bulky delivery challenge, creating a more efficient and satisfying delivery experience for your customers.
But their true power lies in working together.
Imagine a shopper browsing your website after work one evening — a prime online shopping time — and placing a new recliner or lawn mower in the cart. When they find out they can have that item delivered directly to their doorstep the very next afternoon, during a specific delivery window when they know they’ll be home, completing the transaction becomes a no-brainer.
RoadieXD™ allows you to offer extended cut-off times for oversized goods. It consolidates all of those orders for early pickup and transfers them to a Roadie cross-dock facility bright and early the next morning. RoadieXL™ comes in from there, creating an efficient delivery route so an independent driver can get them to your customer on time and at a low cost by the next afternoon. You can even include smaller items, like an extra set of lawn mower spark plugs, in the same delivery.
Big and bulky items no longer have to be roadblocks to last-mile delivery. Cross-docking in specially designed facilities means these items can flow as quickly and easily as any other merchandise. And thanks to Roadie, you can provide a trackable, precise, ultrafast delivery experience that keeps customers happy and coming back for more.
To see how Roadie can transform your last-mile strategy and delight your customers, check out RoadieXL™ and RoadieXD™. Whether used together or separately, these two innovative logistics solutions are doing their part to solve the big and bulky delivery challenge — a revolution you’d be remiss to ignore.
