The head of J.B. Hunt Transportation Services Inc.’s (NASDAQ:JBHT) final-mile operation said Thursday that significant investments must be made in the home delivery of big and bulky items because it is fast becoming the most critical part of the supply chain.

Nick Hobbs, who runs the Lowell, Arkansas-based company’s Dedicated Contract Services (DCS) and Final Mile Services operations, said during the FreightWaves Last Mile Logistics Summit that Hunt is aggressively investing in its final-mile network for heavy goods ordered online. That’s because it is a relatively new area and it is critical to its brand and its customers’, Hobbs said. Since the reputations of both brands are at stake, carriers and their customers must invest the time and resources to collaborate for the benefit of the end consumer, he said.

The key difference between home deliveries of heavy goods and small packages is that large-format items are typically brought into people’s homes. This requires an entirely new level of interaction that many companies with roots in truckload and less-than-truckload (LTL) services are not accustomed to or trained for. 

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