Picture this: you just purchased a $2,500 sofa from an E-commerce store.
You debated the color, size, brand, and cost for WEEKS (if not months); your buying journey has been a wild ride, and you are very excited and nervous to click ‘checkout’.
Little do you know, this is going to be the ‘peak’ of your excitement for a couple of weeks…because what follows is typically a maddening process of trying to get a tracking update or finding out when this sofa will actually arrive.
‘Will it be delivered inside my house? Do I need to take work off to be present for delivery?’
“When will it arrive?”
This is just a small sample of questions you will end up pondering over the next two weeks while you wait patiently for your delivery.
You wait a few days….and receive no tracking updates. You call the E-commerce brand and ask ‘Where is my order?’
(I call that a WISMO call)
and they say ‘let me get back to you on a status; we will email you as soon as possible’.
The rep you just talked to calls the shipping/logistics team to get an update. The shipping team calls the broker who calls the LTL carrier who tells the broker the load was delivered.
Well, the load is delivered as far as the LTL carrier is concerned…because the final mile agent has it now.
The broker tells the shipper the load has been delivered to the final mile agent. The shipping team tells the customer service team and the customer service team tells you that the shipment is at the final mile agent's dock, and to expect a call soon to schedule an appointment.
Days go by. You don’t get a call or text to schedule.
You're frustrated and call back to the E-commerce brand to demand an update (politely). The cycle continues, and the customer service team relays to the shipping team who calls the broker who tries to call the final mile agent…
but no one answers.
The broker then calls the LTL carrier to confirm a POD to the final mile agent. Final Mile agent finally calls the broker back and says they tried calling you, but they need a new contact number because a digit is missing.
The Broker emails the E-commerce brand and relays the info…. You get a call from the E-commerce brand on your phone that does indeed work and they confirm your best contact info.
They relay it to the broker to the final mile agent and bingo bango bongo…your phone rings…and it's the Final Mile agent.
And you're relieved!...until you find out the next available delivery date is in 7 days.
You would kick and scream, but you feel too helpless and just want your couch; so you confirm the date and proceed to hurry up and wait again.
This story unfolds hundreds of times per day across the industry.
The LTL to Final Mile industry is siloed. Each shipment has at least 3 or 4 parties, and it causes chaos for the consumer.
E-Commerce brands spend millions on customer acquisition, only to fumble the ball at the goal line with a fragmented delivery experience.
It’s not their fault though; its time the logistics industry fixes this ever expanding problem.
(If you’ve made it this far, I am about to break down how Big and Bulky LTL works and suggest a few fixes. It’s less storytelling and a lot more technical. Brace yourself.)
You see, Big and Bulky items that need to ship directly to a residence create a unique supply chain problem.
Traditional LTL carriers will deliver ‘curbside’ to a house, but they often don’t offer great tracking, customer service, or handling (high damage rate) for these big and bulky items.
UPS and FedEx are a better option for visibility and handling, but they either won’t ship these items OR they charge outrageous over-dimension fees if the package measures 1 inch outside of the max dim factor.
There are specialty carriers in the ‘home-delivery’ space that have lower damage rates and offer first to final mile deliveries.
These carriers will deliver threshold or room of choice AND are more cost effective than an LTL curbside shipment with a common carrier; BUT, transit times can be very long.
And these providers are just now starting to use API, so the visibility is pretty poor most of the time.
The solution to this problem is to use an LTL carrier to ship to a final mile agent who then delivers threshold or room of choice to the consumer.
LTL carriers love bumping docks (B2B freight), and they have a much lower exception rate when moving freight warehouse to warehouse.
Final Mile agents are much better at residential deliveries, and most of them will make it easy to schedule the delivery appt.
Brands can then leverage each carrier for what they are great at.
LTL carriers can focus on fast transits and their core competency while Final Mile agents can focus on scheduling deliveries and being a great ‘face of the brand’ that the consumer ends up interacting with.
This is the solution. But the industry has a LONG way to go to get this done.
The Problem with LTL to Final Mile (from a logistics perspective):
- Two carriers
- Two tracking systems
- One E-commerce brand (customer service / shipping involved)
- (likely) One broker
- Multiple tms portals
- Two BOLs
- Two pro numbers,
and 1 frustrated consumer.
The Solution: Break down the silos. Democratize access to the platform.
1 tracking link (consumer-facing), 1 ‘throat to choke’ (so to speak) for fixing any issues while in-transit, and event based web-hooks so the final mile agent knows when the freight will arrive and can proactively set the appointment with the consumer.
It seems like there's not a single solution in the marketplace today to fix this issue, but I am confident that by 2025, there will be several players working on this.
I don’t have all the answers today, but what I can say is that Big and Bulky deliveries aren’t going away; whoever solves this problem and builds a better mousetrap will get 100X returns.
If you know a company who’s fixing this problem in a meaningful way, connect with me today and #LetsTalkLogistics!