Today, the United States and other countries all over the world are experiencing massive inflation. Since March 2020, when the covid crisis began, financial markets around the globe have taken a huge hit. Sadly, inflation affects every aspect of our lives, including all commodities, and the shipping and logistics industry has certainly been impacted. In fact, freight prices have been impacted for quite a while now. The effects of soaring commodity prices combined with high freight rates have made it very challenging for businesses in the shipping and logistics industry to remain profitable.

In the supply chain model, goods from a manufacturer or producer are sent for storage from where the goods are delivered to resellers or the end-user. Cross-docking is a supply chain model where businesses remove the storage link. By removing this link, cross-docking allows for the manufacturers of goods to deliver products straight to the customer without having to go to a storage facility or warehouse first. This practice is beneficial cost and time-wise for both buyers and sellers.

The flow of goods is an important cycle of how goods and services flow from start to finish within the economy. At each stage of the flow, there is a movement of goods as well as a change in the monetary value of the products. It is a basic understanding of the movement of goods and how it contributes to the economy overall. To explain this process, we can divide it into three stages that simplify the movement of goods and what occurs during these different points of exchange.