At Co-op Partners Warehouse, we practice something called cross-docking, which entails unloading materials from incoming trucks, and loading them directly onto our outbound trucks with little or no storage in between. This may not sound exciting, but it’s a detail that makes a big impact. Cross-docking with local farmers and producers does two things: it enables smalltime operations without delivery infrastructure to expand the reach of their products, and it cuts down on the number of miles driven by producers going to the same places. So now, trucks delivering Thousand Hills Grass-fed Beef and Castle Rock Dairy don’t have to follow each other around the Twin Cities all day. Instead, they make one trip to CPW, and we move it all out at the same time, making stops at restaurants, co-ops, and other retail locations. It’s a pretty neat example of using cooperation and relationship-building to increase efficiencies and lower everyone’s carbon footprint.

55 Producers use cross-docking with CPW from farms, to bakeries, ranches, dairies, and roasteries.

Our Co-op Partners Warehouse trucks average 3,997 total miles per week. CPW utilizes cross-docks in 30% of its deliveries, which stops producers from having to drive approximately 1,320 miles. This prevents the creation of 93.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, the same amount of carbon sequestered by 77 acres of U.S. forests in one year.

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