Shobhit Elhance, vice president of business development at LogiNext, discusses the pain points faced by shippers and carriers in the delivery of big and bulky items.

In truth, he says, the pain points for the big and bulky delivery sector are very similar to those experienced by parcel carriers or providers delivering small items: high delivery fees, lack of visibility, returns and inadequate scheduling.

“When we order something large, big and bulky, the delivery cost is very high,” Elhance says. “And [merchants] do not have complete visibility because the majority of the orders are dispatched through third-party carriers, not by their own fleets.

“Another pain point is in returns,” he says. “Shippers and carriers have to spend a lot of money in the return scheduling. Another big problem for the end customer is not having the opportunity to schedule or reschedule the order.”

Obviously, costs are passed on to the consumer, but they could be minimized if carriers had the technology needed to automate their deliveries or schedule them in the most optimal way. Efficiency and cost savings would be built in if carriers had better routing technology and multiple orders in the same vehicle. “So, capacity optimization is required.”

Shippers have greater control of the process if they maintain their own fleets, but Elhance says operating a large fleet isn’t a sustainable business model. Control naturally suffers to some degree when deliveries are outsourced. The solution, then, lies in “having an ecosystem where shippers can have visibility from the origin of an order until the time it reaches the end customer.”

That requires using a platform where multiple carriers can be managed from a dashboard or control tab. The ability to evaluate the performance of carriers is indispensable, given the customer-centric nature of deliveries today.