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Trucking Consolidation: Why Your Empty Totes Travel With Strangers
Most of our pickups and deliveries are consolidated — your empties share a trailer with three or four other customers' freight on the same lane. Here is how that decision gets made and why it matters for your cost and carbon footprint.
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The dispatch process
Every Monday, our dispatch team plans the week's lanes based on confirmed pickup and delivery requests. Lanes with predictable volume (Midwest core, Mid-Atlantic, parts of Texas) get fixed weekly runs; lower-density regions get scheduled bi-weekly or built-to-demand.
How customer freight gets consolidated
A truck running Columbus → Indianapolis → Chicago might pick up empties at three customers and drop reconditioned tanks at two more on the same trip. Total miles look the same as a direct run, but the per-tote carbon is divided across the consolidated load.
When direct truckload makes sense
When the volume is large enough to fill the truck on its own (80 units), or when the chemistry requires segregation from other customer freight. Both cases get quoted differently and routed through our direct-truckload partner network rather than the consolidation lanes.
Continue reading
- ← Older: FSMA and IBCs: What the Food Safety Modernization Act Actually Requires (July 19, 2022)
- → Newer: Case Study: A Midwest Industrial Cleaner's Closed-Loop Program (September 4, 2022)