Manufacturing businesses deal with clients found all over the world. Some clients will be local, which makes transporting bulk loads incredibly convenient. Unfortunately, some clients are in less convenient locations.
You might assume this makes transporting bulk shipments difficult, but thanks to transloading, accommodating such circumstances is easier than you might think. Use this guide to discover how transloading improves efficiency in material handling on a routine basis.
What Is Transloading?
Before we get into what makes transloading so efficient, let’s break down how this process works. Bulk shipments of materials travel across the world by road, rail, and sea. Many shipments will require more than one of these transportation methods to reach their final destination—this is where transloading proves beneficial.
Transloading is a method of transporting shipments containing bulk materials. More specifically, transloading involves a manufacturer transferring a bulk shipment to a new mode of transportation.
Sometimes, the best method for transporting products involves transferring the shipment from a barge in the water to a truck or railcar on land. Shipments typically come in the form of boxes, shipping containers, or pallets. Whether you’re moving materials by barge or by freight, transloading is a viable shipping option.
Transloading has steadily gained popularity thanks to e-commerce demand, particularly due to how this transportation method simplifies the bulk goods handling process. With the help of a reliable transloading warehouse, businesses can deliver goods to retailers securely, efficiently, and reliably. Product quality and quick delivery times are key when it comes to building strong relationships with retailers and other clients who can benefit from the previously mentioned attributes.
Third-party transloading facilities are conveniently located throughout the country for businesses to regularly utilize. As you can see, transloading is a fairly straightforward process. Next, let’s dive further into exactly how this process provides businesses with better production efficiency.
Transloading and Efficiency
At first, transloading might sound like just another way to transport goods. So, what makes it special? As the title to this guide suggests, the efficiency of transloading is invaluable when it comes to transporting goods.
One of the top ways transloading boosts production efficiency is the large storage space it can potentially provide. Transloading warehouses come with sufficient storage space, but understandably, you might find this useless if your manufacturing facilities have plenty of storage space already. The great thing about transloading warehouse storage is that these structures help you swiftly get products to clients who are particularly far away.
Theoretically, you can periodically send products from your facility straight to the client. However, transloading buildings give you the chance to store bulk materials as close to your client as possible. That way, next time they ask you for a shipment of materials, you can get products to clients in a timely manner. The quicker you get products to customers without the load sustaining damage along the way, the happier those clients will be with your services. Likewise, the closer the products are to your clients, the fewer the opportunities for products to encounter damage during transportation.
Plus, since barges allow so much storage space, as do transloading warehouses, you can move higher quantities of a product at once. For example, let’s say you have two trucks worth of products to send to a client. Instead of sending multiple trucks straight to the client, you can load those shipments onto one barge, which simplifies the whole process for both you and the customer.
Sometimes, fulfilling a client order requires sending products from one facility. However, some scenarios require businesses to gather products from multiple manufacturing facilities before sending them to clients. Luckily, this is another area that transloading makes more efficient. Thanks to transloading buildings, you can send products from multiple facilities to one place, where they will be securely packaged for the client to receive in one delivery instead of in several.
On the other hand, when possible, you can place several different orders onto one transport, like a barge. Once the barge reaches the transloading station, the different orders can be successfully removed, stored, then re-packaged and sent to their respective destinations. That way, you don’t have to send several transportation vehicles full of products just to accommodate multiple clients.
In turn, these benefits all help businesses expand their reach and work with a wider range of clients. Instead of simply partnering with clients who you can reach via truck, transloading warehouses give you the opportunity to load those truck shipments on a barge and send them overseas.
Seeking Transloading Warehouses
By gaining a better understanding of how transloading improves efficiency, manufacturers can determine if this method is right for their production needs. Some businesses regularly rely on transloading warehouses to get products to clients in a comfortable timeframe.
For this reason, at DoverMEI, we design and engineer various dry bulk material handling equipment for clients, including transloading gear like railcar loading and unloading systems. The same solution isn’t always going to fit different clients, but if transloading fits your needs, consider implementing it into your production process as soon as possible.
Although there are various transloading warehouses across the country, there isn’t unlimited space available. Businesses that can potentially benefit from transloading should make an effort to research the best options for their route right away.
There’s a flurry of manufacturing facilities throughout the U.S. that can take advantage of transloading, some of which may also favor a specific space you’re considering. The quicker you make an effort to seek out the best transloading locations in relation to your shipment destinations, the sooner you can find the best spot available to conduct your operations.
Not only do you have to research for space availability’s sake, but you also have to consider the availability of reliable transloading services. Since transloading involves the transferring of materials from one vehicle to another, mishandling the shipment can result in damaged products.
As you probably know, sending damaged products to your clients doesn’t exactly strengthen your professional relationship. If you find a reliable transloading service provider, you can ensure you won’t have to sacrifice product quality for a quicker delivery time and wider client reach.
