Zone skipping

Typically, carriers group several geographical regions into zones and provide shipping charges for movement of shipments between these zones. Carriers have consolidation and break bulk centers in each zone from where the local shipments within the zone are delivered.

When shipping shipments between zones, warehouses may find it profitable to ship a shipment as an LTL or TL to a carrier in the destination zone. These shipments are later shipped within the zone as parcel shipments. Due to this, warehouses skip several zones that are between the source and destination zones.

The Zone Skipping functionality of Sterling Order Management System enables a warehouse to reduce transportation costs by consolidating individual shipments into an LTL or TL load, shipping them to a region and taking it to the carrier's break bulk node for that region. This consolidated load is called a Break Bulk Load. Upon reaching the break bulk node, the break bulk load is dismantled and individual shipments are shipped to their destinations based on their SCAC and carrier service.