This podcast is sponsored by ArcBest. ArcBest is more than logistics. Whatever you do, whatever you ship, ArcBest makes it easier for you to do business. ArcBest combines reliable capacity, innovative technology and trusted relationships to take the complexity out of your supply chain and keep your shipments moving. That’s what makes ArcBest more than logistics.
In the first episode of the FreightWaves podcast Point Of Sale, host Andrew Cox takes an in-depth look at specific sectors of the retail supply chain and sheds light on how consumers get their goods.
For his first guest, Cox welcomes Satish Jindel, president of ShipMatrix and SJ Consulting, to talk about how reverse logistics goes hand-in-hand with parcel delivery. Jindel got his start in the logistics industry as a founding member of RPS, now FedEx Ground.
In 2020, parcel estimates were astronomical with around 3 billion packages being delivered just in the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Jindel said in his 30 years in the industry, he has never seen a holiday season as intense as this past one.
Jindel said the delivery network did well despite the excess and that good performance had to do with companies implementing extra fees for large shippers moving lots of freight to open up some extra capacity for small parcel delivery. However, all this extra purchasing meant extra returns, further choking up the parcel network.
“Returns represent at the most 7-8% of everything that was shipped to them,”said Jindel, so the effect on retailers in the revenue, not the operations. “It will affect their shipping costs and their profit margins,” said Jindel.
Jindel believes the future of returns will have to be data driven, with retailers understanding customer bases and how those customers go through the decision-making process to make returns. Knowing how consumers are buying and why they are deciding to return is crucial for retailers to keep reverse logistics costs as low as possible.
You can find more Point Of Sale episodes and recaps of all our live podcasts here.