When it comes to delivering products quickly and efficiently, not all logistics models are created equal. Ever had a bulky piece of furniture arrive dinged up? Or opened a meal kit to find wilted veggies? These can be the pitfalls of traditional supply chain logistics, which often involve multiple rounds of loading, unloading, storing and repacking, before the customer receives their order.
With so many opportunities for orders to be damaged or delayed during transit, traditional delivery methods can strain the customer experience and could cost you future business. That’s why many retailers are looking for new ways to get orders from point A to point B quickly and safely.
To achieve this, cross-docking is growing in popularity — and RoadieXD™ is redefining what this logistics approach can do for businesses and their customers. Especially in cases of tricky deliveries like oversized goods, perishable items, bulk orders and aftermarket parts, adding a cross-docking solution to your logistics mix can make ultrafast delivery even more manageable.
Oversized goods: Reducing handling and damage risk
Shipping oversized items like furniture or big-screen TVs presents unique challenges — so much so that some retailers restrict their delivery, and traditional logistics companies often deter big and bulky orders. Fitting unpalletized goods onto trucks, hiring extra labor for handling and acquiring the warehouse space required for storage are among the difficulties with extra-large items.
To top it all off, when traditional logistics involve offloading and reloading items onto each successive truck, the risk of product damage increases as orders move through the supply chain.
Cross-docking helps eliminate much of this complexity and risk by minimizing handling and reducing the chance for damage. Oversized goods can be moved directly from the supplier’s truck to delivery vehicles, streamlining the process and helping to ensure products arrive at customers’ doorsteps in the same condition they left the supplier.
Perishables & meal kits: Faster delivery for fresher products
Meal kits are growing into an $8.7 billion industry, and the suppliers in this space know that their success relies on fresh ingredients. Home chefs won’t continue their subscriptions if their kits arrive with limp produce or spoiled meats — both of which could happen if those kits sit in warehouses too long between delivery stages.
With cross-docking, there’s no concern for delays. Packaged kits are handed off from the supplier to the delivery vehicle within short delivery windows that help maintain freshness without interrupting cold chain requirements. Coordinating these hand-offs through RoadieXD™ gives senders even more benefits. By leveraging batched-and-routed deliveries with Roadie, a meal kit provider can send multiple kits with a single driver on a well-organized route for efficient, fresh delivery within 100 miles of the dock.
Bulk orders: Keeping large deliveries competitive and convenient
Like big and bulky orders, there are some items shoppers have come to prefer purchasing online out of convenience — think air filters, toilet paper and paper towels. While these products tend to be relatively lightweight, they often require oversized packaging and take up a great deal of truck space, both of which can drive up delivery costs when working with traditional carriers.
Cross-docking is a smart approach for orders like these, especially considering the high likelihood that your customers have these items set to deliver on repeat. Subscription services, including those for paper products and household goods like furnace filters, have more than quadrupled in the last 10 years. The recurring revenue model lets retailers and manufacturers improve customer retention and loyalty. To stay competitive in the bulk order business, cross-docking lets retailers keep product costs lower by eliminating warehousing and handling fees, while also speeding up delivery times so customers continue to get their orders on a predictable schedule.
Aftermarket parts: Speeding up critical repairs
In industries like automotive or machinery repair, speed is of the essence. Downtime caused by a missing or broken part can lead to significant revenue loss for businesses, and aftermarket parts — those replacement parts needed for repairs — often require expedited delivery to keep vehicles and equipment running smoothly. However, this time requirement can be an expensive proposition if you’re using traditional logistics. Most normal supply chains run on predictable schedules, and carriers may charge quite a bit more to fit last-minute or small orders into their routes.
Cross-docking can help speed up the delivery of tires and critical parts so mechanics and technicians get what they need without delay. By eliminating the need for items to sit in a warehouse before being repacked, cross-docking ensures that parts stay on the road so vehicles and machinery can get on the road too.
Cross-docking solves delivery challenges for any industry
Whether it’s reducing the risk of damage, ensuring freshness or meeting tight delivery windows, cross-docking offers a streamlined, efficient alternative to traditional logistics models. And with RoadieXD™, businesses in a variety of industries can leverage even more ultra-fast delivery features like real-time tracking, no cut-off times and delivery vehicles matched to the size and needs of a specific order.
From oversized products to fresh fruit, RoadieXD™ enables you to streamline logistics in multiple ways. Reach out to a team member today to add cross-docking and other on-demand logistics benefits to your logistics mix so you can keep meeting customers’ high expectations with speed and reliability.
