I’ve watched enterprise retailers hit the same wall when they try to deliver at scale. Their existing logistics setup works fine for boxes. Then they try to move pallets, non-uniform products, heavier boxes. Last-mile deliveries account for over 41% of overall supply chain costs—and that percentage skyrockets when you’re dealing with Big & Bulky items.

Everything breaks.

The Infrastructure Trap

The first problem is obvious: you don’t have the right vehicles. Standard delivery vans can’t handle the weight. You need specialized trucks with lift gates, tie-down systems, and loading equipment.

Building that infrastructure means massive CAPEX investment. So most retailers take what seems like the smart path—they work with third-party providers.

That’s when they lose operational efficiency.

The Coordination Nightmare

Third-party providers in Big & Bulky typically lack three things: technology, support systems, and specialized expertise. Labor costs make up more than 40% of total operating expenses for 59% of 3PL providers, placing significant pressure on profit margins. Your operations team ends up running a manual command center for every single delivery.

Here’s what that actually looks like:

Before pickup: Coordinate timing, confirm equipment availability, verify the location.

During transit: Track traffic conditions, monitor if the driver stays on route, handle unexpected delays.

At drop-off: Reconfirm timing, coordinate access to the location, manage the unloading process.

Multiply this across dozens or hundreds of daily deliveries. The coordination model collapses under its own weight. Research shows that 58% of big and bulky deliveries are rescheduled—each reschedule multiplying the coordination burden exponentially.

Why Hiring More People Doesn’t Fix It

The obvious solution seems simple: hire more coordinators and operations staff.

You just traded your CAPEX problem for an OPEX crisis. Finding, retaining, and training workers has proven to be a significant issue for 70% of logistics providers, while 79% report concern over increasing labor costs. Labor costs scale linearly with volume, but the complexity scales exponentially.

Some companies tried the opposite approach—buying assets to control everything in-house. That creates a different trap.

When Owning Assets Becomes a Liability

Asset ownership sounds like control. In Big & Bulky, it’s a straightjacket.

You need different vehicle types for different jobs. You need capacity that flexes with demand across multiple locations. When you own 100 trucks, you’re stuck with 100 trucks.

Peak season arrives. Your fleet can’t handle the volume. One client reported cost savings of over $100 per delivery by switching to a marketplace model that could flex capacity on demand. But if you own assets, you’re back to working with third-party providers anyway.

The vicious cycle repeats.

The Expertise Gap Nobody Talks About

Moving a 10-pound box requires hands. Moving a 300-pound refrigerator requires expertise. Delivering large items costs more than smaller packages due to factors such as specialized equipment like larger trucks and lift gates, two-person delivery teams, and installation services.

You need drivers who understand proper tie-down techniques, loading processes, and weight distribution. They need specialized equipment—gloves, straps, dollies. Standard freight networks weren’t built for this.

When a driver shows up without that expertise, you don’t just get a delayed delivery. Your entire supply chain freezes.

You’re scrambling for a replacement provider while weighing the risk of product damage against the cost of delay.

What Actually Works

The solution isn’t more assets or more coordinators. It’s treating this as an optimization problem.

Technology can match thousands of fleet partners with shifting demand in real-time. AI considers parameters that humans can’t scale: driver history and availability, vehicle type and equipment quality, pricing negotiations, confirmation timing, loading specifications. Companies using advanced analytics can reduce transportation delays by up to 20% and cut logistics costs considerably.

Emerging markets figured this out first. When you have fragmented trucking industries, asset-light marketplace models become the only viable path. Asset-light companies outperformed their asset-heavy peers by 4% in the last five years of shareholder returns. Established markets are now following that lead.

The Obsolete Assumption

Enterprise retailers still believe they need to control logistics assets to provide the best customer experience.

That assumption is becoming obsolete. In a 2021 survey of more than 1,000 C-suite executives, 31% said digitization and technology shifts prompted them to consider asset-light strategies, while 25% cited imperatives to meet customer demand and 21% pointed to capital requirements to fuel growth. Technology provides better coordination and customer experience without the asset burden. The companies winning in Big & Bulky aren’t the ones with the biggest fleets.

They’re the ones who realized control and ownership aren’t the same thing.