SCD: The rise of LTL: How e-commerce changed the middle mile

SUPPLY CHAIN DIVE reports:

(Businesses are shipping smaller quantities of freight more frequently, giving logistics professionals more to manage in increasingly complex networks.)

What comes after the first mile and before the last mile? Logically, that’s where the middle mile goes. Logistically, though, the in-between leg of the supply chain has not historically been top of mind for every shipper.

That’s changed in the last five years, due to e-commerce.

“It’s really moved the middle mile from being kind of a commoditized afterthought, to really more of [a] competitive advantage in today’s environment,” Mac Pinkerton, C.H. Robinson’s president of North American surface transportation, told Supply Chain Dive.

The story of how e-commerce transformed logistics is familiar to supply chain stakeholders. Consumers came to expect fast — and free — delivery, which is a notion many logistics professionals find ridiculous.

“Freight is not free,” said Meg Schmidt-Duncan, director of strategic sourcing at Koch Logistics. The cost is “built in there somewhere.”

Businesses are shipping smaller quantities of freight more frequently, giving logistics professionals more to manage in increasingly complex networks. And it’s a pricey business for everyone involved.

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