Oftentimes during the transportation of goods, the freight itself may need to go through some special handling from either the transportation company or a third party vendor owning or renting warehousing space - otherwise known as cross docking. Here's everything you need to know.
Oftentimes during the transportation of goods, the freight itself may need to go through some special handling from either the transportation company or a third party vendor owning or renting warehousing space. There are a variety of reasons for why your operations may include the need for cross-docking or Trans-Loading freight depending on your customers request or simply based on your delivery activities.These activities oftentimes are seen in the Freight Forwarding market and the drayage segment of transportation.
It encompasses activities such as:
Handling those special freight handling requests in a TMS can be cumbersome at times and not provide the right level of information while trying to stay on top of appointment settings and overall communication of what is required from every party involved in the process of cross-docking (or transloading) freight.
In this tips & tricks article, we'll be focus on how to best address the following aspect of cross docking operations:
After you started creating your shipment and are now at the stage where you populate the different legs of the said shipment, under the LOADS tab, you have the opportunity to add a load for which the shipper and the consignee’s location will invariably be the warehouse location and where the crossdock operations need to take place.
This tip using FreightPath will allow you to provide great granularity to your team or vendor as far as the freight life cycle is concerned from the original pick-up to its final destination.
The power of the Load element in FreightPath allows you to add key tasks or activities that do not necessarily require the use of a carrier to move freight but rather create a task that allows your team to effectively communicate about the freight handling activities.
Individual invoices can also be created for each different task or transload that you add into the system.
Using FreightPath's shipment booking and management features, you and the rest of the freight brokerage team can create a multi-leg shipment including a section for your cross docking activities.
The following information is required to provide efficient guidance to your crossdock team or cross dock service provider:
Those information are becoming particularly important when your team is dealing with Drayage operations or with Freight Forwarding operations.
The FreightPath Load template builder comes handy to allow you to enter all the required above mentioned information and organize it in an easy to read and easy to share TransLoad document that can be reviewed and actioned upon by your team or vendor.
“With FreightPath, the ability to track freight, complete paperwork, and share updates within seconds has become invaluable; not just for my team but for my customers and carriers too.”
