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| What if Watermelons were Square? |
I find just about everyone gets the idea that putting more stuff in a trailer will generally reduce your overall costs because you will use less trailers. It is that simple. Miles per unit sold goes down and with that the cost of transportation. Further, your sustainability goals are met far quicker because less miles means less emissions. The easiest way to reduce the cost of anything is just to stop using it. Concentrating on cube utilization accomplishes this.
However, for all the people who know this I find a lot less worry about secondary cube or what some call "liquid cube". This actually takes into account the utilization of the cartons or packaging of product you are loading in the truck. Think of it this way: You may load 1,000 cases of xyz product into your trailer, look at it, and say "wow, did I cube out that trailer"! What you may miss though is the cube utilization of the cases is horrible. Open the cases and you may find a lot of air due to bottles being curved, sizing relative to the case not done properly, or just packaging which is too big for its contents. If you are able to solve that problem (per my previous post, most likely with the marketing and merchandising folks) you may find you can put a lot more product in that same trailer.
So, the journey continues... Once you think you have cubed the trailer, start looking at secondary cube and start solving that problem. Keep packing them tight and ELIMINATE emissions and cost; don't just reduce it.
(Answer to above question: A lot more would fit in a trailer - after all, the rind is merely nature's packaging!)
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