CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Pilot Freight Services has opened a new hub here for its Furniture Direct program with the goal of easing congestion at its partner carriers’ North Carolina hubs, improving service to its own retail customers and speeding up delivery out of its final-mile hubs across the country.
With this new solution, Philadelphia-based Pilot is building a direct express service to major markets in the United States.
“We were finding it very difficult to move product through hubs at our carrier partners in North Carolina,” said Mark Fierek, vice president of sales for Pilot Last Mile Home. “We went from 10 business days to retailers across the country. Our average proof of delivery to consumers in our final-mile operation has gone from 15 days to 25 days.”
He added that’s on top of increased manufacturing lead times, especially for custom-order furniture.
The new Charlotte hub will be fed either by Pilot’s own first-mile system or partner carriers’ first-mile systems, with Pilot picking up the goods at vendor distribution centers or factories, or other carriers dropping shipments for delivery to Pilot’s “soft touch” final-mile hubs across the country. At those hubs, freight is off-loaded, cross-docked and loaded by hand using hand carts and furniture dollies.
Currently, the Charlotte hub ships to Pilot’s East Coast locations in Baltimore/Washington, New Jersey/New York and Boston in one to three business days; and to western hubs in Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco within two to five days.
In Charlotte, Fierek said Pilot will have weekly and daily sweeps to consolidate product for weekly express runs.
“This will significantly improve transit to market and to help ease the current four- to six-week backlog,” Fierek said. “In a couple of weeks, I believe we’ll put on a Salt Lake/Portland/Seattle run.”
I'm Powell Slaughter, senior editor at Furniture/Today. I returned to the publication in January 2015 after nine years of writing about furniture retail strategies and best practices at a monthly magazine focusing on home furnishings retail operations. Prior to that, I spent 10 years with F/T covering wood furniture, the last five of those as case goods editor. Upon my return to F/T, I developed coverage of the logistical and service aspects of the furniture industry as well as following the occasional, home office and home entertainment categories. In April 2018 I took over the upholstery category, with responsibility for coverage of the fabric and leather stationary and motion upholstery, recliners and massage chair categories.
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August 06, 2021 at 05:06PM
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Pilot adds Furniture Express hub in Charlotte - Furniture Today
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