Sunbelt Furniture Xpress transforms its crossdock
Want to get more efficient? Here's how a carrier serving the new furniture industry re-invented crossdocking.
By Maida Napolitano, Contributing Editor -- Modern Materials Handling, 11/11/2009
Sunbelt Furniture Xpress, a specialized carrier of new furniture, has been crossdocking for 42 years. Recently, the company has re-invented its crossdock operation to combat a challenging housing and furniture market. The goal: work smarter, reduce handling, reduce miles traveled and consolidate loads to make them tighter and more defined.
The company picks up furniture from multiple manufacturers and furniture importers, transports items to Sunbelt facilities where they are crossdocked to furniture retailers in the 17-state "sunbelt" area that they service. They crossdock about 5,000 pieces of furniture each day. The main bulk of their delivery—about 90%—goes to small chain retailers in the southern U.S. with six stores or less.
While some crossdock proponents may cringe at crossdocking large, heavy, bulky furniture, it's been the key to Sunbelt's success. Thanks to crossdocking, there is less handling of an item, which means they are less susceptible to damage.
All of Sunbelt's freight is typically handled by hand with a two-man team. Since less than 10% of the freight is palletized, they don't use lift trucks. Manual loading also allows for better stacking and packing of the product in the trailers creating tighter, consolidated loads while reducing shipping costs.
And while the actual physical crossdock may be largely manual, the planning and execution behind the operation is where the company concentrates a large part of its technology. Using e-mails and fax, the carrier is in constant communication with its customers to set up pick-up and delivery stops. These are entered into a computer system where district fleet managers are planning routes, tracking every pick-up and delivery, consolidating loads, reducing excess miles and eliminating deadhead miles.
Sunbelt Furniture Xpress believes in the notion that if a trailer is loaded correctly, then it delivers correctly. The company also tracks the hours and associated dock costs used to move the freight across each facility.
Originally, the company operated two large crossdock facilities within North Carolina. By keeping track of costs, it realized that it was spending a lot of time and money shuttling between these two facilities, North Carolina's furniture market was also changing significantly; major manufacturers were shifting production to low-wage countries in Asia. As a result, there was no longer a need for 180,000 square feet of combined crossdocking space on the East Coast when more products were coming in on the West Coast.
To top it all off, as home sales declined, the company saw its business decline. All of these major economic developments have paved the way for major restructuring changes in the way Sunbelt crossdocks.
Instead, Sunbelt Furniture Xpress opened a 15,000-square-foot facility in Fontana, Calif., with plans to consolidate into one larger 114,000-square-foot facility in Hickory, N.C. The Hickory crossdock expansion was completed in early 2009. In the short term, there are also plans to open another facility in Dallas, close to more ship points.
When it's all said and done, there will be the same amount of crossdock square footage in the Sunbelt system, but it will just be more efficiently spread over three locations closer to ports and markets.
By not shuttling between facilities, there will be less handling and consequently less damage with fewer claims from damage. Overall, that shrinks the customers' time to market and significantly reduces the shipper’s transportation and handling costs. That’s a crossdocking win-win for everyone.
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