In the logistics relay race, cross-docking is the baton hand-off you’ve been looking for. Since Amazon Prime debuted in 2005, retailers have been pushing to meet consumer demand for faster delivery. Each time e-commerce businesses clock faster delivery speeds, shoppers respond by saying “fast … but not fast enough.”

Recent Forrester research says as recently as 2019, shoppers expected online order delivery in 5.7 days. Today, that’s dropped to just 2.5 days — and retailers are working to deliver on that demand. Amazon has shrunk its delivery timelines from 3.7 days in 2019 to just 1.5 days by mid-2023. Non-Amazon retailers dropped their click-to-door speeds from more than eight days to just 5.2 in the same time period. 

To stay competitive and keep order hand-offs smooth from warehouse to customer, more e-commerce businesses are turning to cross-docking. Haven’t tried it? Here’s what you need to know about how this 1930s innovation has evolved to meet modern delivery demands.

What is cross-docking?

On their race from one stop in the supply chain to the next, the more time packages spend moving, the better. When orders come to a standstill, delivery times increase and customer satisfaction drops. Cross-docks are a great solution for providing your supply chain with a hand-off point that doesn’t come with lengthy delays. 

Just like the baton in a relay race, timing is everything in cross-docking. Using a “just in time” scheduling approach, cross-docks offer a space where goods arriving on an incoming truck can be immediately sorted onto outgoing trucks. Cross-docks aren’t set up for warehousing, so materials don’t stop at these locations for any length of time. The result is a fast-paced, low-overhead logistics solution that keeps orders sprinting toward the finish line: the customer’s doorstep.

How did cross-docking start? 

The roots of cross-docking stretch back to the early 20th century when the logistics industry was beginning to pick up speed, thanks to the rise of semi-trucks. Businesses were looking for ways to handle the growing volume of freight moving across the country, and warehousing everything just wasn’t efficient. Enter cross-docking, a strategy that allowed goods to be transferred from one truck to another without slowing down for a warehouse break.

In this early stage, cross-docking was like the start of a relay race, setting the pace for what would become a critical component of supply chain management. Goods were quickly unloaded from one truck and reloaded onto another, keeping the momentum going and reducing the need for costly and time-consuming storage. By the 1930s, the U.S. military began leveraging the approach, which was integral to supplying troops with food, ammunition and supplies during World War II. 

Cross-docking leads to the rise of a megaretailer

By the time the 1980s rolled around, cross-docking had become a key player in the logistics race, and Walmart was leading the charge. With all its efficiencies, it’s no surprise that the value-driven retailer saw cross-docking as an effective and affordable way to keep its supply chain moving at top speed. Additional warehouses would mean expensive overhead that would either cut into Walmart’s margins or force them to raise prices for customers. Cross-docking let them avoid those costs without sacrificing delivery time between suppliers and store shelves — and continues to do so today.

Walmart’s success with cross-docking was like setting a new world record in the logistics relay race. Other companies quickly followed suit, adopting the strategy to reduce storage costs and improve delivery times. Cross-docking became a crucial part of the playbook for any business looking to stay ahead in the fast-paced world of retail and supply chain management.

Modern cross-docking for the 21st century

Walmart’s success was just the start of cross-docking growing a presence in the retail world and logistics in general. By 2014, almost half of all U.S. warehouses offered cross-docking — which one study called “high-speed warehousing” — and retailers everywhere are leveraging its benefits in a variety of valuable use cases:

• Big & bulky: Large items like furniture, appliances, lawn mowers and more can take up tremendous warehouse space. Cross-docking helps alleviate that issue by letting senders transfer oversized items from truck to truck, without having to worry about storage.
• Perishables: As consumer requests for meal kit services and pet food subscriptions have increased, brands can more easily fulfill these orders without concern that items will sit and spoil.
• Construction: From demanding residential homeowners to large-scale commercial contracts where payment depends on completion time, builders don’t have time to wait for warehouse staff to sift through delivered goods. Cross-docking lets construction companies move everything from lumber to insulation from supplier to jobsite more efficiently.

Between these benefits and new innovations in logistics, cross-docking is truly on a fast track now. Concepts like crowdsourced logistics have entered the race, giving cross-docking a turbo boost that takes logistics efficiency and speed to new heights. 

Crowdsourced delivery is the teammate that’s ready to make up ground even in the tightest races. With a network of independent drivers available, crowdsourcing is a new anchor leg in the logistics relay that lets businesses move orders at ultrafast speeds the final mile from cross-docks in virtually any region in the country. The capabilities offered by crowdsourced delivery technology tie in perfectly with cross-docking, since crowdsourced drivers can pick up any item from anywhere — including your cross-dock hand-off point.

In fact, crowdsourced delivery and cross-docking have led to a powerhouse relay team in last-mile logistics: RoadieXD™. This new Roadie solution combines the power of crowdsourcing with proven logistics strategies, creating a seamless new kind of cross-docking experience that’s faster and more flexible than ever before. With RoadieXD™, customer orders are delivered the same day they reach a Roadie cross-dock location, fulfilling ultrafast delivery promises even on tight delivery windows.

As a bonus, RoadieXD™ offers an ideal way for senders to manage big and bulky items. Instead of finding warehouse space to store items that often won’t fit in standard racking, then forcing them into a last-mile delivery pipeline that wasn’t built for oversized goods, those items can be cross-docked through a Roadie facility and dispatched for final-mile delivery seamlessly. For many retailers selling large, heavy or awkward items, this process can reduce oversized delivery from weeks to days (or even same-day). 

RoadieXD™ is your winning supply chain strategy 

Cross-docking has been setting the pace in logistics for nearly a century, evolving from its early days in the 1930s to the high-tech relay race it is today. With technology innovations like crowdsourced delivery, cross-docking is faster, more efficient and more accessible than ever. Just like a well-coordinated relay team, it keeps the supply chain moving smoothly, ensuring that products get where they need to go at record speed. 

The best part? You don’t have to be a megaretailer to leverage the benefits of cross-docking. Like bringing a star athlete onto the team, RoadieXD™ is available to help your team get to the finish line in a flash — and improve your bottom line in the process. Reach out to learn how to add RoadieXD™ to your relay team today.