Deciding not to deliver big and bulky items can hurt your company’s bottom line. Here’s how you can meet your customers’ expectations this peak season and all year round.
Peak season is right around the corner, and companies are buttoning up their logistics strategies in anticipation of a wild ride. This year’s sales events and promotions will start as early as October, with retailers’ supply chains and delivery networks strained by the heightened demand.
And with one of the shortest traditional holiday shopping seasons ever this year, companies aren’t wasting any time shoring up their delivery and logistics approaches.
“Gone are the days of a single tentpole event like Black Friday driving the majority of peak season sales,” Roadie’s Dennis Moon writes in A Look Ahead to 2024 Peak Season. “Consumers have grown accustomed to a calendar of rolling promotions that blend seamlessly from fall through winter as retailers look to pull more volume earlier to avoid delivery bottlenecks during one of the shortest holiday seasons ever.”
Cross-Docking + On-Demand Delivery = Success
By combining cross-docking with on-demand last-mile delivery, retailers can offer the speed, visibility and optionality that their customers expect, especially on big and bulky items. This means that all of those artificial Christmas trees, new appliances given as holiday gifts and New Year’s resolution treadmills will get to their final destinations on time and in good condition.
The benefits of cross-docking big and bulky orders extend beyond ensuring timely delivery of the goods. According to a new report from Roadie, businesses are gaining clear logistical benefits from this strategy, including increased productivity, reduced labor costs, freed-up space in their facilities and decreased order-to-ship windows.
Roadie’s Big & Bulky Delivery Report further cements the need for a solid cross-docking strategy both during peak and year-round.
Hidden costs of restricting big and bulky deliveries
When it comes to home delivery, big and bulky merchandise has always been a misfit. These products’ non-standard dimensions often result in slower movement and higher costs through distribution facilities and delivery networks. They also require extra effort on the part of the warehouse employees, who have to find a place to store the goods and then hunt them down when it comes time to fulfill an order.
The big-and-bulky burden is so significant that over one-third (36.7%) of the 150 retailers, e-tailers and other businesses surveyed by Roadie and Supply Chain Dive’s studioID have restricted delivery for certain oversized items due to:
- The potential for excessive product damage (55% of respondents cite this as a primary driver for restricting big-and-bulky deliveries)
- Difficulties managing multiple transportation/logistics providers (54%)
- High delivery costs (51%)
Restricting big and bulky deliveries can hurt a retailer’s bottom line, mainly because they tend to include higher-margin items. Safe to say, companies are shooting themselves in the foot by not allowing their customers to order those kayaks, treadmills or household appliances for delivery.
Cross-docking to the rescue
Modern fulfillment and delivery systems are built around standardization and efficiency, but big and bulky items put both of these to the test. For example, the top logistics challenges cited in the survey include the early cut-off times carriers often require for oversized items (47%) and the complexity of managing multiple carriers to cover the entire market they serve (45%).
To address these and other challenges, 82% of companies have turned to third-party providers that can cross-dock the goods. This approach yields some clear logistical benefits, including increased efficiency (46%) and freeing up warehouse space (46%) by removing the cumbersome, space-consuming items from their own warehouses or distribution centers.
Here are seven more reasons why companies are making cross-docking a part of their peak delivery strategy this year:
- Productivity gains. According to the survey, outsourcing pre-sorting, cross-docking and delivery of bulky goods to suitable providers translates to the highest reported benefit (62% of responses): an increase in productivity.
- A perfect match for on-demand last-mile delivery. By combining cross-docking with on-demand last-mile delivery, retailers can offer consumers the ultrafast delivery speed, visibility and control over delivery windows that they increasingly demand.
- Reduced storage expenses. Cross-docking helps reduce overhead costs and keeps products out on the dock or in a staging area. Because products move seamlessly off one vehicle, onto the dock and then back onto a delivery truck, there’s no need to store those big and bulky products. This advantage is especially beneficial during the fast-paced peak months.
- Less costly warehouse overhead. Real estate is expensive, with utilities, maintenance and lease payments being just some of the core costs. There’s also shelving to buy, forklifts to lease and other equipment to install. By infusing cross-docking into your last-mile logistics strategy, inventory goes out just as quickly as it arrives. This reduces the burden on existing warehouse resources and eliminates the need for additional DC space.
- Labor cost savings. The warehouse labor shortage is still in full swing, and payroll costs are increasing. By quickly moving merchandise from one truck to the next without ever storing those goods, retailers can minimize the number of “touches” needed to get orders picked, packed and out the door.
- Better inventory management. Stockouts and overstocks are costly and they both become even bigger headaches during peak. Cross-docking helps alleviate this pain point by moving goods from the truck to the dock and then back to another truck for delivery. This reduces the amount of time in transit, and also leads to faster payments and bottom-line boosts (especially for companies that previously restricted big and bulky deliveries).
- Delighted customers that come back for more. Companies that use RoadieXD™ for cross-docking the final mile can fulfill orders more efficiently and quickly — exactly what customers have come to expect in today’s fast-paced delivery environment. With RoadieXD™, products spend less time in storage and get shipped faster. This rapidly-expanding network of cross-docks enables ultrafast local delivery of big and bulky goods through the Roadie platform.
Your secret weapon for peak season success
Peak season brings more inventory to manage, labor shortages to contend with, delayed shipments to plan around, higher shipping rates and general unpredictability. Winter weather can interfere with delivery schedules, for example, and stockouts can impact customer service levels.
Cross-docking helps companies better control their final-mile logistics and reduce touches in transit while meeting their customers’ delivery expectations. And by choosing RoadieXD™ for cross-docking you can combine a nationwide cross-dock network with a nationwide last-mile delivery network, and leverage a single provider to offer same-day delivery across a wide range of SKUs with minimal cost and complexity.
Connect with the experts at Roadie to explore peak season delivery solutions like RoadieXD™.
