Railcar & Cross Docking
Railcar & Cross-Docking
Cross-Docking is a practice of unloading materials from incoming railcars or semi-trailers and loading these materials directly into outbound trucks, trailers, or railcars, with little or no storage in between. Cross-Docking is an effective solution leveraged to improve transportation service to customers and reduce handling and storage costs. This may be done to change modes of transportation, to sort material intended for different destinations, or to combine material from different locations into transport vehicles (or containers) with the same, or similar destination.
Located only 40 miles from one of the United States’ busiest interstate highway intersections, I-80 & I-35, PDM is able to take advantage of its location and efficiency to provide greater value for our customers. PDM also has the unique flexibility to work with a locally owned Railroad operation, Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad, which allows us to provide a more prompt and reliable cross-docking service.
There are several advantages to using PDM’s Cross-Docking services including:
- Increased efficiency in which product moves from point of origin to point of sale
- Reduced transportation costs
- Reduced inventory costs
- Reduced or eliminated warehousing costs
- Faster delivery
- Capable of handling both dry & liquid freight
Cross-Docking allows clients to route product from one or multiple manufacturing site(s) to a PDM distribution center. Product is shipped in bulk from manufacturing plants to PDM where it is broken down into multiple shipments and delivered directly to customers. Additionally, special packaging and labeling requirements can be managed by PDM as part of our cross-docking service.
Cross-Docking is a sound strategy for companies that:
- Ship long distances from production site(s) to multiple customers using LTL shipments. Crossdocking allows companies to send bulk shipments via full truckload or railcar to PDM to reduce transportation costs to the final destination.
- Require the unloading and merging of bulk shipments from various points of production to combine specified products and fulfill customized orders.
- Have a regional customer base far from the origin of production and demands a short delivery window between the time of order placement and requested delivery date.
- Do not have the physical space, equipment, labor, or materials required for special order fulfillment, palletizing, labeling and packaging activities at their manufacturing site.
- Wish to reduce the amount of excess inventory stored at their own facility or manufacturing site.