Cross Docking: What It Is, and the Numbers That Define a Cross-Dock

What do the key cross docking statistics actually show?

9.98 times as much published floor area per dock door: Core5’s Middletown Building 1 has 5,442.1 square feet per door, compared with 545.5 at Crowley’s Camp Hill facility, using Core5’s undated specifications and Crowley’s 2019 announcement. Both sources use “cross-dock,” but this calculation compares published dimensions—not how goods move inside the buildings. Cross docking moves incoming freight into outbound flows rather than routine warehouse stockholding; staging and interim storage can occur. Core5 · Crowley · Maersk

1. 9.98× is the calculated Core5-to-Crowley area-per-door ratio: (1,219,021 ÷ 224) ÷ (30,000 ÷ 55). Core5’s undated building specification and Crowley’s September 26, 2019 operating announcement supply the inputs; this is a two-record comparison, not an industry average. Calculated and source-checked September 14, 2026. Core5 · Crowley
2. About 2,063.1 square feet per dock: Maersk’s May 14, 2024 Rotterdam announcement reports 23,000 square meters and 120 docks, with interim storage. The area is converted using NIST’s exact international-foot definition; “docks” is Maersk’s denominator, not an independently counted set of door openings. Maersk · NIST
3. About 150 and 200 doors are model transitions, not construction rules: Bartholdi and Gue’s 2004 computational study generally favors an I-shape below about 150 doors, a T at intermediate sizes, and an X above about 200, depending on the modeled freight flows and receiving-door share. Bartholdi and Gue
4. Roughly 10% additional modeled travel-related labor cost is the 2004 study’s finding for I-shaped docks above about 220 doors; it is not an observed payroll increase or a universal saving available from rebuilding. Bartholdi and Gue
5. $29.4 million covered four properties, not one terminal: the Yellow estate’s December 4, 2023 successful-bid schedule lists A. Duie Pyle’s package containing Rochester, Camp Hill, Erie and Bridgeport. That bundle value cannot supply an individual terminal’s price per door. Court filing, Exhibit 2
6. 12 feet center to center is the door offset described as common practice in Bartholdi and Gue’s 2004 paper; it is a historical observation used in the model, not a present-day code minimum or a verified spacing at every listed building. Bartholdi and Gue
7. 590 feet is I-78 Commerce Center’s building depth in EQT’s December 22, 2025 announcement. The 60–120-foot LTL widths described in the 2004 geometry paper concern a different evidence set; neither figure establishes the building’s current freight process. EQT · Bartholdi and Gue
8. 24 hours or less is the departure period described as common in Amazon Freight’s July 10, 2026 LTL explainer. Like the under-24-hour description in the 2004 paper, it is descriptive language, not a published sample mean or service guarantee. Amazon Freight · Bartholdi and Gue
9. August 24, 2011: PHMSA’s Interpretation 10-0257 addresses cross-dock hazmat work. In the private-motor-carrier circumstances described, loading, blocking and bracing with the driver absent are regulated pre-transportation functions; driver presence is not a blanket exemption. PHMSA
10. June 6, 2016 was the effective date of FDA’s Sanitary Transportation final rule. A person loading food onto a motor or rail vehicle can be a “loader” under 21 CFR 1.904, but coverage depends on the rule’s scope and exclusions—not simply on handling food at a cross-dock. Final rule · 21 CFR Part 1 Subpart O
11. Eight to twelve door positions per inside corner is the loss described in the 2004 geometry discussion for 48-foot trailers at 12-foot door offsets. It is a model-context design observation, not a site-specific engineering determination. Bartholdi and Gue
12. 9 feet by 10 feet is the dock-door opening size in Kinsley Properties’ May 13, 2024 description of 900 Rosedale Avenue in Dauphin County. The source does not publish the spacing between those openings. Kinsley Properties
13. 185 and 190 feet are the truck court depths reported for I-78 Commerce Center in December 2025 and Core5 Middletown Building 1’s undated specifications, respectively; Core5 also specifies a 60-foot concrete apron. These are two property specifications, not a market-wide standard. EQT · Core5
14. 553 usable doors is the Central Freight Dallas example in the manuscript underlying Bartholdi and Gue’s 2004 paper. It is a historical example known to the authors, not a current largest-facility claim. Bartholdi and Gue, Appendix B
15. **28 locations—26 owned properties and two leased properties—**were included in the acquisition approval XPO announced on December 12, 2023. That count describes one transaction package, not all US cross-docks or all of XPO’s terminals. XPO

By Harrisburg Dock Door Repair Research
Last verified: September 14, 2026. Source years above are the years of the underlying statements, not new 2026 measurements.

Contents. Key statistics · What cross docking means · Floor area per dock door · What this shows and what it does not · How we built this · Doors and shape · How long freight sits · Terminal prices · Regulation and classification · How many cross-docks exist · Cross docking in Pennsylvania · Warehousing and transloading · Hazards · Why the distinction matters · Limitations · Dataset · Attribution reference · FAQ · Sources

What does "cross docking" actually mean?

Cross docking is the practice of moving freight from an arriving vehicle into a departing flow with little or no routine inventory storage between them. The 2004 research defines it against the storage and order-picking functions of a warehouse; Maersk’s operating examples also show that interim storage can be part of a cross-dock service. Industrial-property specifications can instead use “cross-dock” to describe a building configuration, which is a different kind of evidence. Bartholdi and Gue · Maersk · Core5

The operations meaning

In freight operations, cross docking describes what happens to the goods. An inbound trailer arrives, the freight is identified and sorted by outbound destination, and it moves toward the appropriate departing load rather than being put away as ordinary warehouse inventory. That is the process described in Amazon Freight’s LTL explainer; it does not require every outbound door to sit directly opposite the inbound door. Amazon Freight

The doors have names. Receiving doors—also called strip or breakout doors in the 2004 paper—are where inbound trailers unload. Shipping doors, or load doors, are where outbound trailers fill. The paper attributes a 21–67% receiving-door share at one carrier to private correspondence from 2001. We verified that attribution in the paper, not the underlying carrier records. Bartholdi and Gue, section 1.1

Less-than-truckload trucking—LTL, where multiple customers’ shipments share capacity—uses terminal sorting within its network. The Census Bureau’s 2022 definition of long-distance LTL includes both local and destination sorting and terminal operations. Government consolidation offers a documented example too: Crowley’s 2019 Camp Hill announcement describes consolidating freight for Defense Logistics Agency Distribution Susquehanna in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. 2022 NAICS Manual · Crowley

The real-estate meaning

In a property specification, “cross-dock” can describe the configuration rather than a tenant’s operating method. Core5 Industrial Partners lists Middletown Building 1’s configuration as “Cross-dock”—a 1,219,021-square-foot building with 224 dock-high doors and a specified site area of 196.27 acres. Its brochure shows doors on opposing sides of the building. Core5 · Core5 brochure

The shape permits cross docking. It does not perform it.

A building specification gives dimensions and equipment counts. It does not tell us how long freight stays, whether goods enter inventory, or what proportion of the tenant’s shipments bypasses storage. We did not observe any tenant’s operations.

Why the two meanings get confused

The problem appears when a figure from one is used to describe the other—when a building’s door count is treated as proof of freight-transfer operations, or when an LTL description of shipment timing is applied to an entire distribution building.

The next section compares the documents numerically. It does not turn a building ratio into an operating diagnosis.

How much building is there behind each dock door?

Published area per dock door is building or property area divided by the source’s stated door count. This register has 11 documented facility records with both inputs, including an international record converted from square meters; the sources do not establish a clean dividing line between operating cross-docks and cross-dock-configured buildings. The ratio describes the published dimensions, not dwell time, storage intensity or throughput.

Table 1: Published area per dock door, with source scope preserved

Source: Crowley (2019); Kinsley Properties (2024); Core5 property page and brochure; EQT Real Estate (2025); Maersk (2024); Yellow estate Doc. 1268, Exhibits 2 and 4 (December 4, 2023); XPO (December 12, 2023); NIST unit definitions. Ratios calculated by Harrisburg Dock Door Repair Research. All source text checked September 14, 2026. Source list

Read the denominator and area label together. The estate schedule labels its area “Total Sq. Ft.”; it does not isolate freight-transfer floor space. Maersk reports docks, while other sources report doors or dock-high doors. These differences remain visible because mathematically reproducible ratios are not automatically interchangeable operating measures.

Dataset: Facility register CSV · JSON · Inputs · Calculation script. Fields include original units, source vintage, denominator label, calculation and exclusion status. Attribution reference

The comparison is not a clean split

Core5’s Building 1 at Middletown carries 5,442.1 square feet per dock-high door. Crowley’s Camp Hill announcement gives 545.5 square feet per door. Dividing the unrounded ratios gives 9.98 times as much published area per door at Core5. The calculation is reproducible; a claim that this ratio proves the operations inside either building is not. Core5 · Crowley

The Rotterdam record matters. Its converted 2,063.1 square feet per dock sits between Crowley and the Pennsylvania building-specification examples, and Maersk explicitly describes interim storage. Excluding this record merely because the area was published in square meters would hide relevant evidence. Maersk

The historical estate properties supply more small-area terminal examples, but they do not resolve that problem. Their 2023 inventory descriptions are not observations of current operations, and total property-building area may include space other than the transfer floor. The selected records do not establish a bimodal national distribution.

Building depth adds context, not a diagnosis

The 2004 geometry paper describes LTL cross-docks as 60–120 feet wide in the authors’ experience and demonstrates a travel-distance advantage for narrower docks within its geometric assumptions. The same discussion says retail cross-docks may be wider to accommodate value-added processing. Staging requirements and the operation being served matter. Bartholdi and Gue, sections 1.2.2–1.2.3

I-78 Commerce Center has a 590-foot building depth in its owner’s December 2025 description. Dividing 590 by the endpoints of the historical 60–120-foot range gives approximately 4.9–9.8 times those widths. That is a comparison of published dimensions from different contexts—not evidence that the larger building is badly designed or cannot perform cross docking. EQT

Table 2: Published building specifications, Pennsylvania cross-dock buildings

Source: Kinsley Properties, May 13, 2024; Core5 Industrial Partners property page and Building 1 brochure panel, with site drawing; EQT Real Estate, December 22, 2025. “Not stated” refers only to the cited documents. Source text checked September 14, 2026. Kinsley · Core5 page · Core5 brochure · EQT

The Core5 source conflict remains visible. The web page and brochure disagree about column spacing, and the brochure’s drawing and specification text do not give the same acreage. We have not established whether those differences reflect revisions, gross versus another area basis, or an error. Acreage calculations below explicitly use the 196.27-acre specification, not an independently reconciled parcel measurement.

Two details in that table are worth pulling out. First, 900 Rosedale’s dock-door openings measure 9 feet by 10 feet, but the release does not establish their center-to-center spacing. Applying the paper’s historical 12-foot offset would invent a site-specific pier dimension, so no wall-spacing calculation is made. Kinsley

Second, the two cited Pennsylvania properties publishing truck court depths give 185 and 190 feet. The geometry study deliberately set aside several site constraints, including trailer movements and parking. These are additional property facts, not proof of a market-wide design standard. EQT · Core5 · Bartholdi and Gue

What does this comparison show—and what does it not show?

This register shows that published cross-dock figures come from different kinds of documents with different meanings. An opening announcement, a building specification and a historical estate schedule are not interchangeable evidence of an operating process. We did not observe operations anywhere.

Specifically, this page does not establish:

• That any building in Table 2 does or does not perform cross docking. The evidence labels describe the documents, not measured tenant behavior.
• A national average dwell time, price per pallet or handling-cost saving. No qualifying measurement of those outcomes is established by this compilation.
• A count of cross-dock facilities in the United States. National-count limitations
• Current operating status, throughput or availability. Historical records keep their original dates.

The 2004 geometry paper is a computational study, not a survey of the buildings in this register. Its model evaluates travel between doors as a basis for comparing travel-related labor cost. Its thresholds do not become observed savings merely because they appear next to real facility records. Bartholdi and Gue

How was this cross-docking dataset built?

The audited register contains 23 entries: 18 documented facility entries, four excluded source leads and one historical carrier-level benchmark. It is accompanied by 28 geometry/provenance records and seven federal regulatory or statistical-classification records, source-checked on September 14, 2026. Only accepted primary-source inputs enter the calculations; an excluded lead is not counted as a verified facility.

What we collected. The original candidate list was checked against company announcements, developer and owner specifications, the authors’ accepted research manuscript, agency materials and the Yellow estate’s December 4, 2023 court filing. The court exhibits were read directly. Secondary reporting was useful for discovery, but unsupported individual transaction values were not carried into the final numerical fields.

The geometry source. The review used Bartholdi and Gue’s The Best Shape for a Crossdock, published in Transportation Science 38(2):235–244 (2004), alongside the authors’ accepted manuscript dated June 23, 2003. The paper’s definitions, experimental assumptions, results, limitations and cited correspondence were checked separately. Where the paper quotes unpublished private correspondence, the record says so; reading the quotation does not verify the underlying private measurement. Manuscript · Publication record

How the derived figures were computed. Area per door is the published area divided by the exact published denominator. Doors per acre is exact door count divided by stated site acres. An individual price per door would require a verified single-property amount and a matched door count; no such individual price is published in this version, and bundle values are held in a separate table.

Published area as a percentage of site area is area ÷ (acres × 43,560) × 100. This is not a measured building footprint or a verified zoning lot-coverage percentage. Trailer spaces per door is computed only from an exact parking count; “more than” a number and an expansion option are not silently treated as completed counts. NIST supplies the 43,560-square-foot acre relationship and the exact 0.3048-metre foot used for Rotterdam’s unit conversion. NIST conversion table · NIST foot definition

Rounding and precision. Area-per-door results are rounded once, from the original inputs, to one decimal place. Doors per acre and percentage fields use two decimals. The 9.98× comparison is calculated from unrounded ratios, not by dividing the displayed rounded results. Extra decimal places in a conversion do not mean the source measured a building that precisely.

What counts as one record. The carrier-level historical average is not a terminal. An unverified location lead is not a facility observation. Multiple buildings described together by a source cannot be presented as one measured freight-transfer floor without evidence identifying that floor. The dataset includes a record type and area-scope field to keep these distinctions machine-readable.

Classification. Evidence classes distinguish an operating announcement, a developer/owner building specification, a historical estate inventory and an excluded source lead. A company can describe both cross docking and warehousing at one site, as Crowley does. We do not force those activities into mutually exclusive building classes. Crowley

Geography. County names explicitly given by developers are retained. Camp Hill and Erie references use the county association of the named locality, not a cadastral check that a facility lies within that municipality. The unnamed Scranton-area lead has no county assigned; a nearby locality and a matching door count are not enough to identify a property. Cumberland County · Erie County Council

Verification tiers. ★ means the statement was read in a primary document; it does not mean a site inspection or an audit of the original measurement. ● means the research paper attributes the statement to unpublished correspondence; only that published attribution is verified here. Excluded transaction and location leads are marked “excluded,” not given a verification star. No figure with an unverified primary input enters the headline calculation.

Conflicts and missing values. Conflicting primary specifications stay visible rather than being averaged into one answer. Missing fields remain empty in CSV and are not replaced by zero. The source record, vintage and chosen denominator remain attached to every accepted calculation.

What we did not do. No site visits. No interviews. No surveys. No shipment logs. No independent measurement of any building. We did not contact any company named here, reproduce the paper’s full simulation, or inspect the private correspondence it cites. The included script reproduces this register’s arithmetic, not the 2004 computational experiment.

How many doors does a cross-dock have, and what shape should it be?

Door count is the first design decision emphasized in Bartholdi and Gue’s 2004 analysis, but the preferred shape depends on the model’s conditions. Its broad result favors I-shaped docks below about 150 doors, T-shaped docks at intermediate sizes and X-shaped docks above about 200, with roughly 10% additional modeled travel-related labor cost for I-shaped docks above about 220 doors. These are historical computational findings, not a modern construction code or a shape prescription for every distribution building. Bartholdi and Gue

Table 3: Published cross-dock design parameters and their evidence limits

Source: Bartholdi, J.J. III, and Gue, K.R., “The Best Shape for a Crossdock,” Transportation Science 38(2):235–244 (2004), accepted manuscript dated June 23, 2003. Every row concerns that historical source; source text checked September 14, 2026. ★ = paper statement checked; ● = paper’s attribution to unpublished correspondence checked, not the underlying measurement. Manuscript and publication record

The paper does not supply a universal savings percentage. Its work model uses travel between doors to compare shapes, and real facilities also face constraints that the analysis deliberately sets aside. The parameter table is a reference to the paper, not an engineering checklist.

Why shape follows size in the model

An I-shape—a long narrow rectangle—gives its central doors shorter average access to the rest of the dock than its end doors. The problem is that an I gets longer as it grows. The paper’s 250-door example puts the far ends nearly a quarter-mile apart. Freight traveling between those ends faces a long route. Bartholdi and Gue, sections 1.2.1 and 1.2.4

Branching shapes address that distance problem and create a new one. A T, X or H can bring distant doors closer to the center, but the inside corners make nearby positions unusable under the assumed trailer geometry. For 48-foot trailers at 12-foot offsets, the paper describes at least four positions on each side of an inside corner, or eight to twelve positions with more conservative allowances. Bartholdi and Gue, section 1.3

So the shape question is a trade: pay corner costs to buy shorter travel. The thresholds summarize that trade under the studied conditions. They do not account for every lot, traffic plan, freight mix or existing building.

Three qualifications that belong with the paper’s findings

The 10% figure is modeled. The study suggests roughly 10% additional labor cost for I-shaped docks above about 220 doors within its modeled comparison. The cost mechanism is travel between doors. Calling that a measured payroll penalty—or promising the same saving at a real terminal—would change what the study established. Bartholdi and Gue, section 3

X-shaped docks were a model recommendation, not a census observation. The authors state that they knew of no X-shaped dock in practice when writing the paper. We have not verified the current shape of each facility in this register, so that historical statement cannot supply a present-day count. Bartholdi and Gue, sections 3–4

“Straight across the dock” was less than half of the travel in the docks the authors visited. Their explanation describes most distance as running along the building rather than directly across it. This is the authors’ reported experience, not a representative industry percentage, and it helps explain why a narrow building can still have a substantial travel problem. Bartholdi and Gue, section 1.2.2

How long does freight actually sit in a cross-dock?

The reviewed sources do not establish a measured average cross-docking dwell time. Bartholdi and Gue’s 2004 paper describes shipments as typically spending under 24 hours, sometimes under one hour, while Amazon Freight’s July 2026 explainer describes outbound departures as often occurring within 24 hours or less. These are descriptive statements, not sampled performance measurements or universal limits. Bartholdi and Gue · Amazon Freight

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A writer who changes “often within 24 hours” into “cross docking always takes less than 24 hours” has converted a description into a guarantee. The source does not support that step.

Cross docking also does not require zero staging. Freight does not necessarily arrive in the sequence in which an outbound trailer must be loaded. The 2004 paper identifies staging requirements as a reason docks need sufficient width, and Maersk’s Rotterdam announcement explicitly includes interim storage. Bartholdi and Gue, section 1.2.3 · Maersk Rotterdam

There is a useful counterexample to a universal 24-hour boundary: Maersk’s undated service description includes 72 hours of free storage in a delayed cross-dock option. That is a published allowance, not a measured average dwell, a mandatory stay or confirmed availability at every Maersk location. It cannot be averaged with Amazon’s departure description. Maersk service description; checked September 14, 2026

Timing reference: descriptions and allowances are not the same measure

Source: Bartholdi and Gue (2004); Amazon Freight (July 10, 2026); Maersk Warehousing and Distribution service description. Source text checked September 14, 2026. Research paper · Amazon Freight · Maersk

No comparable shipment-level dwell dataset is established by these sources. We are not filling that gap with an estimate, or treating three unlike statements as a trend over time.

What did cross-dock terminals actually sell for?

The primary records reviewed here support named estate properties and multi-property successful bids, but they do not establish the eight individual sale prices proposed for this comparison. No individual price-per-door distribution is published in this version. The table retains each location and explains what was—and was not—verified, rather than turning reported allocations, bids or rounded prices into comparable completed sales. Yellow estate filing, December 4, 2023

Table 4: Individual-terminal price verification, former Yellow estate leads

Source: Yellow estate Doc. 1268, Exhibit 2 successful-bid schedules and Exhibit 4 remaining-property schedule, December 4, 2023; A. Duie Pyle Bridgeport announcement, June 16, 2025. Door counts from the estate schedule are historical inventory figures, not proof of a later closing or unchanged configuration. Source text checked September 14, 2026. Court filing · Pyle Bridgeport

Table 4a: Bundle amounts that the primary court schedule does establish

Source: Yellow Corporation et al., Case 23-11069-CTG, Doc. 1268, Exhibit 2, pages 2 and 5, filed December 4, 2023. Checked September 14, 2026. XPO separately announced acquisition approval on December 12, 2023; approval and a recorded closing are different events. Court filing · XPO announcement

A price-per-door calculation requires more than finding a price and a door count in articles about the same city. The amount must apply to the same identified property, the interest transferred must be clear, and the door count needs a compatible vintage and scope. A bundled bid cannot be divided by one terminal’s doors. A later report of a rounded allocation is not automatically a recorded single-property sale.

The inspected filing supplies precise property identifiers for several rows, which makes the door-count and area comparisons reproducible. It does not supply the later individual sale amounts for those rows. Those are separate verification questions, and one cannot stand in for the other.

Nor do these records establish why prices differ. Location, property rights, building condition, site area and transaction scope would have to be investigated before assigning a cause. This page therefore makes no claim that a sale-price spread is “about location, not construction,” and it does not compare an unverified Carlisle amount with a buyer’s network average.

The Maybrook estate entry has 304 doors in the 2023 schedule, putting its count above the historical model’s approximate 200-door transition. That does not prove the existing shape, the appropriate shape for its traffic, or a financial penalty. A door-count threshold from a travel model is not a property valuation method. Court filing, Exhibit 4 · Bartholdi and Gue

How is cross docking regulated?

The reviewed federal sources regulate functions such as hazardous-materials loading and covered food transportation, not a single universal operating category established by a property’s “cross-dock” label. PHMSA explicitly discusses cross-dock activities in its 2011 interpretation, so the term is not absent from federal agency material. NAICS codes below are statistical classifications, not safety regulations or operating permits. PHMSA · FDA · 2022 NAICS Manual

Table 5: Federal regulatory and statistical-classification records relevant to cross docking

Source: PHMSA Interpretation 10-0257; eCFR 21 CFR Part 1 Subpart O; FDA’s final-rule and inflation-cutoff material; Federal Register final rule, April 6, 2016; U.S. Census Bureau 2022 NAICS Manual. Source text checked September 14, 2026. PHMSA · eCFR · FDA cutoffs · Effective date · NAICS definitions

The PHMSA response addresses a specific question about cross-dock employees loading hazardous materials onto outbound trailers. In the private-carrier circumstances discussed, transportation begins when the driver takes possession; loading and securing performed before that point are pre-transportation functions. That distinction separates regulated functions—it does not say the work becomes unregulated when a driver is present. PHMSA

The food rule needs the same precision. “Loader” is a defined role, but scope comes first. For example, the definition of transportation operations excludes certain movements of fully enclosed food that does not require temperature control for safety, and the rule contains non-covered-business and other provisions. A cross-dock label neither establishes coverage nor supplies an exemption. 21 CFR 1.900 and 1.904

The NAICS definition is useful for a different reason. It describes the LTL network as a sequence of pickup, sorting, line-haul and delivery activities. That makes it relevant background for cross docking, but a count of establishments in that industry still does not measure whether, or how much, a specific establishment cross-docks. 2022 NAICS Manual, 484122

This section explains the reviewed federal sources. It is not a complete determination of the requirements for a particular facility, shipment or jurisdiction.

How many cross-docks are there in the United States?

This reference does not establish a defensible current national count. The “more than 10,000” figure in the 2004 paper traces to unpublished correspondence from 2000 and covers the United States and Canada together. We verified that provenance in the paper; we did not verify the underlying estimate. Bartholdi and Gue, section 1 and references

Here is the whole distinction. A historical statement in a research paper can establish what the authors reported and whom they credited. It does not become a present-day American facility inventory simply because later writers repeat the same number. The unpublished correspondence is not available in the inspected material, its coverage spans two countries, and its vintage is explicit.

Claims about the percentage of US warehouses that cross-dock are also excluded from this reference. No underlying measurement with a stated population, denominator and collection method was established during this audit. An unsourced adoption percentage would add apparent precision without adding evidence.

The federal statistical categories do not resolve the measurement question by themselves. The three definitions reviewed—484122, 488490 and 493110—describe long-distance LTL trucking, other road-transportation support activities, and general warehousing/storage. Their definitions are not a census of facilities practicing cross docking, and adding the categories together would mix activities without demonstrating which establishments belong in a cross-dock inventory. 2022 NAICS Manual

A more defensible statement is a named, dated disclosure with a narrow scope. XPO’s December 12, 2023 announcement concerns 28 acquisition-approved locations, comprising 26 owned and two leased properties. It is useful transaction evidence precisely because the company, date and denominator stay attached to the number. It is not a substitute for a national count. XPO

The absence of a verified count in these sources is a limitation of this compilation, not proof that no useful dataset exists anywhere. No national facility total or state-by-state adoption ranking is published here.

What does cross docking look like in Pennsylvania?

The Pennsylvania entries show operating announcements, developer specifications and estate evidence alongside one excluded location lead. The register retains eight Pennsylvania entries, but only seven identify facilities supported by the reviewed primary sources; the Scranton-area lead is not treated as an identified facility. Dauphin County’s two building records sit alongside Camp Hill operating announcements and other dated examples, not a complete county inventory.

Table 6: Pennsylvania cross-dock records and the limits of their geography

Source: Yellow estate Doc. 1268 (2023); XPO (2023); Core5; EQT (2025); Kinsley (2024); A. Duie Pyle Camp Hill and Erie announcements (2025); Crowley (2019); official Cumberland County and Erie County Council locality references. Source text checked September 14, 2026. County associations are not parcel-boundary verification. Primary source list

Two records use a Camp Hill address

Camp Hill appears twice in the register with two unrelated operating announcements. Crowley’s 55-door, 30,000-square-foot cross-dock was announced in 2019 for government-freight consolidation, with capacity for 100 additional trailers. The same announcement describes warehousing capabilities, so treating it as evidence that no storage occurs would misstate its source. Crowley

A. Duie Pyle’s company-hosted January 9, 2025 report describes an 85-door service center on 11 acres, with offices, dock doors and fleet-maintenance facilities being refreshed. The report gives a Camp Hill address and proximity to Interstate 83 and US 11. It does not establish the later January reopening day used in some summaries, or prove that all of the described refresh had already been completed. A. Duie Pyle

Those figures have different units. Crowley’s calculated 545.5 square feet per door describes published facility area relative to doors. Pyle’s 7.73 doors per acre describes the count relative to stated site area. They cannot be compared as though both were door-density measures, and a shared postal locality does not prove that both parcels are inside Camp Hill Borough.

Density describes the stated site, not its purpose

Doors per acre is a useful calculation when the site-area boundary is clear. It does not identify which parts of a parcel are trailer parking, buildings, setbacks, roads or other land uses.

Pennsylvania site-density comparison

Source: A. Duie Pyle’s January 9, 2025 company-hosted report; Core5’s property specifications; arithmetic by Harrisburg Dock Door Repair Research. Carlisle retained without an unsupported ratio. Source text and calculations checked September 14, 2026. Pyle · Core5

Core5’s 1.14 doors per acre accompanies a specified 190-foot truck court, 60-foot concrete apron and 363 trailer spaces, with expansion to 500 described separately. The site acreage is the 196.27-acre specification, not the different figure on the brochure’s site drawing. No expansion is counted as completed. Core5 page · Brochure

The published building area divided by that specified site area gives 14.26%: 1,219,021 ÷ (196.27 × 43,560) × 100. That is an area-to-site-area calculation, not a measured building footprint, a zoning lot-coverage determination, or evidence that all remaining acreage is trailer yard. Core5 · NIST

What the corridor descriptions establish

Core5 describes access from its Middletown park to Interstates 76, 81 and 83 and identifies Norfolk Southern’s Harrisburg and Rutherford intermodal yards as nearby network connections. EQT’s announcement places I-78 Commerce Center in the Central Pennsylvania distribution market, and Pyle’s Camp Hill report describes its site in relation to the interstate network. These are attributed location descriptions, not our own accessibility model or an independently measured market ranking. Core5 · EQT · Pyle

The records are useful because they distinguish the same broad term across different documents. They do not establish that one county has more cross-docking activity than another, that a specified building is fully occupied, or that a historical opening announcement describes conditions today.

How is cross docking different from warehousing and transloading?

These terms answer different questions and are not interchangeable. Warehousing concerns storing goods and related fulfillment functions; cross docking concerns connecting inbound goods to outbound flows rather than routine stockholding; transloading concerns transfer between transport equipment or modes. A single facility can combine these activities, as Maersk’s Rotterdam description and Crowley’s Camp Hill announcement demonstrate. Bartholdi and Gue · Maersk · Crowley

Warehousing includes holding goods as inventory alongside receiving, order picking and shipping. The 2004 research explains cross docking by removing the storage and order-picking functions from its comparison while retaining receiving and shipping. That conceptual contrast does not prove that a mixed-use building never stores other goods. Bartholdi and Gue

Transloading can include unloading ocean containers and transferring their contents to onward road transport. Freight can be transloaded and cross-docked in the same movement. Maersk’s Rotterdam announcement describes that combination and includes interim storage, which is a reminder that an operator’s service scope is more informative than a rigid label. Maersk

Cross docking describes the connection between incoming and outgoing freight without a routine inventory-storage cycle. Sorting, consolidation, deconsolidation and temporary staging can be part of that connection. Maersk’s warehousing/distribution material describes consolidation and deconsolidation, as well as the separate delayed option; these are service descriptions, not measured timing guarantees. Maersk service description

A practical distinction for interpreting documents is to ask whether the statement concerns the goods’ inventory treatment, their onward routing, or a change of transport equipment. A brief physical stop does not by itself decide the classification, and a building can support more than one process.

What makes work on a cross-dock hazardous?

Cross-dock work can involve trailers, powered industrial trucks, elevated edges, machinery and regulated freight. The applicable precautions depend on the equipment, work and shipment; a short dwell time does not remove those obligations. OSHA, PHMSA and FDA are the primary sources for the workplace and transportation requirements summarized here. OSHA · PHMSA · FDA

The specific hazards deserve accurate names rather than do-it-yourself instructions:

• Trailer movement at the dock. OSHA’s powered-industrial-truck standard addresses truck and trailer movement during loading or unloading. The applicable restraint and vehicle provisions must be read in their operating context; this page does not give a loading or restraint procedure. 29 CFR 1910.178
• Powered industrial trucks. Operator competence, training and evaluation requirements appear in 29 CFR 1910.178(l). Powered pallet trucks fall within the powered-equipment context; a manual pallet jack should not be described as though it automatically has the same powered-truck training rule. OSHA
• Dock edges, levelers and stored energy. Pits and leveler machinery can create access, crushing and energy-control hazards. A pit is not automatically a confined space or a permit-required confined space: the employer must evaluate it against the definitions in 29 CFR 1910.146. Applicable servicing work is also governed by hazardous-energy requirements in 29 CFR 1910.147. Confined spaces · Hazardous energy
• Hazardous materials. PHMSA’s interpretation makes clear that the cross-dock setting does not put hazardous-materials loading outside the regulatory framework. The classification of the task and compliance of the shipment remain material. PHMSA
• Food safety. A facility participating in covered transportation operations may have loader or other duties under 21 CFR Part 1 Subpart O. Coverage, roles and exclusions must be established rather than inferred from the word “cross-dock.” eCFR

For a particular facility, competent safety personnel and qualified professionals must evaluate the equipment, conditions and applicable requirements. This reference explains the evidence; it is not a procedure for entering a pit, servicing a leveler, operating powered equipment or handling a hazardous shipment.

Why does the distinction matter when reading recent facility announcements?

The reviewed 2023 estate records, 2024 opening and completion announcements, and 2025 property and carrier announcements put different kinds of cross-dock information next to one another. Some describe ownership packages, some describe buildings, and some describe an operator’s intended service. Reading those as a single, consistent measurement series would change what the sources actually say. Court filing · Kinsley · Maersk · EQT · Pyle

A 224-door developer specification and a 55-door operating announcement can both use “cross-dock” while producing very different area-per-door ratios. Neither the difference nor the shared label establishes the tenant’s freight process. The useful question is which document supplied the figure, which date it describes, and what exactly was counted. Core5 · Crowley

That is the practical reason this register exists. It brings the original source, denominator, date and evidence type into the same place. Where the records permit arithmetic, the calculation is shown; where they do not, the empty result is part of the answer rather than a space filled with a plausible number.

What does this reference not establish?

This is a purposive reference compilation, not a representative survey, operational audit or complete property inventory. Its calculations are reproducible from the cited inputs, but that does not make unlike source measurements identical. We would rather name the gaps than paper over them.

Selection and record counts. The 23-entry register contains 18 documented facility entries, four excluded source leads and one historical carrier benchmark. The excluded entries are retained to show the audit outcome, not to inflate the number of verified facilities. Estate records and the Pennsylvania building examples were selected for available documentation, not through a sampling frame.

The area-per-door comparison. Eleven facility records have accepted area and exact door/dock-count inputs. Their ratios are not population parameters, and the source labels include total property-building area, facility area and building area. No ratio is represented as dedicated transfer-floor area unless the original document establishes that scope. No clean operating-versus-building split is claimed.

Court records and individual prices. Doc. 1268 and its relevant exhibits were inspected directly. That verifies the statements in that filing, not every later report of a sale, allocation, closing or buyer. The individual prices in Table 4 were not established by the inspected primary evidence and are excluded from the numerical dataset. The bundle amounts remain separate.

Specifications are not operations. A developer’s configuration listing describes a structure. It does not establish what a tenant does inside, whether a trailer position is usable today, or what proportion of freight bypasses stockholding. We did not observe operations at any facility named here.

No measured dwell-time distribution. The timing descriptions and the 72-hour service allowance do not share a measurement definition. They cannot supply a mean, percentile, universal maximum or trend. We found no comparable shipment-level timing dataset within the sources reviewed.

Dates vary widely. The historical research example comes from the manuscript underlying the 2004 paper; the estate property schedule is from 2023; the operating and building announcements include 2019, 2024 and 2025 records. A source checked in 2026 is not thereby a 2026 measurement or evidence of current availability.

Conflicting and missing fields. Core5’s primary documents disagree on column spacing and show different acreage figures in specification text and a drawing. The chosen acreage denominator is disclosed rather than treated as a reconciled survey. Exact XPO Carlisle and Kernersville area/count pairs were not accepted from the primary materials reviewed. The unmatched Scranton-area lead has no inferred county.

Figures we could not verify. No national cross-dock inventory, defensible warehouse adoption percentage, average cost per pallet or industry-wide savings percentage is established here. The historical US-and-Canada count and carrier benchmarks in the paper are retained only as explicitly labeled provenance records, not independently verified population measurements.

The geometry research is from 2003–04. Its assumptions and results are presented as historical research, not silently updated design standards. We did not re-run its simulation, verify the present layout of each property, or establish that its preferred shape minimizes total cost for a modern operation.

The register’s originality. The original work here is the source join, classification, calculations, exclusion decisions and downloadable register. The underlying company disclosures, court schedules and research findings remain attributable to their original producers. This compilation is not a new survey of the freight industry.

What is included in the downloadable cross-docking dataset?

Version 1.1, source-checked September 14, 2026, includes the facility register, original calculation inputs, geometry/provenance ledger, federal reference ledger, bundle-price table and source register. The files preserve source years, record types, units and exclusions so they can be reused without turning historical or unmatched records into current observations. The calculation script rebuilds the register’s arithmetic from the included input CSV.

Complete dated dataset ZIP

Dataset files and contents

Source: Harrisburg Dock Door Repair Research’s original compilation of the primary documents listed below. Version 1.1; source text checked September 14, 2026. Download rows with no accepted numeric input remain blank rather than zero.

Each table and key finding has a stable anchor. The most direct calculation references are area per door, building specifications, design parameters, timing statements, individual-price verification, bundle amounts, federal records and Pennsylvania entries.

Version record. Version 1.1 corrects units and evidence classifications, uses direct court records where available, adds the Rotterdam area conversion, excludes unsupported individual prices and supplies the reproducible inputs. Historical source dates remain unchanged.

Refresh method. The review cadence is quarterly for undated operator and developer pages and annual for historical-document links and context. FDA’s annually updated inflation table and any relevant regulatory amendments require a fresh verification of the affected rows. A changed “last verified” date must correspond to an actual source review, and substantive data changes receive a new dated version rather than overwriting the history.

What are this page’s attribution details?

The publication and dataset details below identify this reference. Individual company, agency and research findings retain the source attributions shown beside them; the compilation’s date does not replace their original dates.

How to cite this page

Publication: Harrisburg Dock Door Repair Research
Page title: Cross Docking: What It Is, and the Numbers That Define a Cross-Dock
Canonical reference: https://harrisburgdockdoorrepair.com/research/cross-docking/
Source verification date: September 14, 2026
Dataset: Cross-Dock Facility Register and Reference Ledgers, version 1.1

What are the answers to common cross-docking questions?

The answers below use the same evidence boundaries as the tables. A descriptive operating statement, a building specification and a regulatory definition should not be substituted for one another.

Is cross docking always completed within 24 hours?

No. Under 24 hours is descriptive wording in the 2004 research and Amazon Freight’s July 10, 2026 LTL explainer, not a measured average or a universal deadline. Maersk separately describes a delayed cross-dock option with a 72-hour free-storage allowance; that allowance measures a different thing and must not be averaged with the timing descriptions. Bartholdi and Gue · Amazon Freight · Maersk

Does cross docking allow any storage at all?

It can include staging and interim storage. The 2004 paper explains how freight waits near a shipping door while an outbound load is assembled, and Maersk’s Rotterdam announcement explicitly includes interim storage. That differs from saying every shipment enters a routine warehouse stockholding cycle, or that no goods are ever stored anywhere in a mixed-use building. Bartholdi and Gue · Maersk

How many dock doors does a cross-dock have?

The accepted records do not establish a universal door count. Pyle’s Erie announcement reports 16 doors, while the historical Central Freight Dallas example in the 2004 paper has 553 usable doors; those are dated examples, not the endpoints of a current industry census. The paper’s experiment examined 40–350 doors, and its approximately 180-door carrier average with a 63–300 range is attributed to private correspondence from 2001, not independently verified here. A. Duie Pyle · Bartholdi and Gue

What shape should a cross-dock be?

Within the 2004 study’s modeled travel-cost comparison, an I-shape generally performs best below about 150 doors, a T at intermediate sizes, and an X above about 200, depending on freight flows and receiving-door share. The roughly 10% penalty discussed for I-shaped docks above about 220 doors is modeled, not observed payroll. Lot constraints, vehicle access, freight requirements and existing structures also need evaluation; these historical results are not a construction prescription. Bartholdi and Gue

Does a building described as "cross-dock" actually perform cross docking?

The building label alone does not establish that. A developer’s configuration and door count describe a structure, not measured tenant freight flows. Core5 and Crowley provide a reproducible two-record area-per-door comparison, but Maersk’s Rotterdam record and the differing area and denominator labels prevent treating that comparison as a clean operational dividing line. Core5 Industrial Partners · Crowley · Maersk

Is cross docking the same as transloading?

No. Transloading concerns transferring freight between transport equipment or modes; cross docking concerns connecting incoming goods to outgoing flows rather than routine inventory stockholding. A movement can do both and can include a temporary stop, as Maersk’s Rotterdam announcement demonstrates. Maersk · Bartholdi and Gue

Is cross docking regulated by the federal government?

The work can be regulated by function, and PHMSA explicitly discusses cross-dock activities in Interpretation 10-0257. Its private-carrier example treats the described loading and securing before the driver takes possession as pre-transportation functions; that does not make driver presence a blanket exemption. FDA’s food-transportation rule defines loaders but also has scope limits and exclusions, so a cross-dock label alone does not determine coverage. PHMSA · Electronic Code of Federal Regulations

How many cross-docks are there in the United States?

This reference does not establish a defensible current national total. The more-than-10,000 figure attributed in the 2004 paper comes from unpublished correspondence in 2000 and covers the United States and Canada together. The NAICS definitions reviewed here classify industries; they do not, by themselves, count which facilities perform cross docking. Bartholdi and Gue · U.S. Census Bureau

Are these Pennsylvania records a complete list of cross-docks in those counties?

No. There are eight retained Pennsylvania entries, but only seven identify facilities supported by the reviewed primary records; the unmatched Scranton-area lead is excluded from the numerical analysis. These selected records are not a county inventory, and locality associations are not independent parcel-boundary checks.

What is a strip door, and what is a shipping door?

The 2004 paper calls inbound doors receiving, strip or breakout doors and outbound doors shipping or load doors. It attributes a 21–67% receiving-door share at one carrier to private correspondence from 2001. That attribution was checked in the paper; the underlying private carrier records were not available for independent verification. Bartholdi and Gue

Which primary sources support this reference?

The source list identifies the original documents used for accepted facts and calculations. All were checked on September 14, 2026; publication, filing and version dates are stated separately, and checking a historical source does not establish current operating conditions.

1. Bartholdi and Gue, The Best Shape for a Crossdock
Source vintage: 2004; accepted manuscript June 23, 2003. Verified September 14, 2026. The authors’ accepted manuscript is the version read for definitions, parameters, model findings and correspondence attributions. Private correspondence cited inside it was not inspected.

2. INFORMS, Transportation Science 38(2):235–244, DOI 10.1287/trsc.1030.0077
Source vintage: May 2004. Verified September 14, 2026. Publication venue and DOI verification; the accepted manuscript supplies the inspected research text.

3. PHMSA, Interpretation Response 10-0257
Source vintage: August 24, 2011. Verified September 14, 2026.

4. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, 21 CFR Part 1 Subpart O
Source vintage: Current text checked September 14, 2026. Verified September 14, 2026.

5. FDA, FSMA Final Rule on Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food
Source vintage: Final rule overview; checked September 14, 2026. Verified September 14, 2026.

6. Federal Register, Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food, 81 FR 20092
Source vintage: April 6, 2016; effective June 6, 2016. Verified September 14, 2026.

7. FDA, FSMA Inflation Adjusted Cut Offs, Sanitary Transportation table
Source vintage: 2026 comparison using the average for 2023–2025. Verified September 14, 2026.

8. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Manual
Source vintage: 2022; definitions 484122, 488490 and 493110. Verified September 14, 2026.

9. OSHA, 29 CFR 1910.178, Powered industrial trucks
Source vintage: Current standard checked September 14, 2026. Verified September 14, 2026.

10. OSHA, 29 CFR 1910.146, Permit-required confined spaces
Source vintage: Current standard checked September 14, 2026. Verified September 14, 2026.

11. OSHA, 29 CFR 1910.147, The control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout)
Source vintage: Current standard checked September 14, 2026. Verified September 14, 2026.

12. Core5 Industrial Partners, Core5 at Middletown, Building 1 property specifications
Source vintage: Undated page; checked September 14, 2026. Verified September 14, 2026.

13. Core5 Industrial Partners, Core5 at Middletown, Buildings 1 and 2 brochure
Source vintage: Filename indicates August 8, 2023; Building 1 panel; document publication date not independently established. Verified September 14, 2026. Building 1 specification panel and site drawing; the filename indicates August 8, 2023, rather than an independently established publication date. Conflicts with the live property page remain visible.

14. Kinsley Properties, Kinsley Properties Delivers New Industrial Warehouse Facility In Middletown, PA
Source vintage: May 13, 2024; completion April 2024. Verified September 14, 2026.

15. EQT Real Estate, EQT Real Estate acquires I-78 Commerce Center, a recently developed logistics facility in Central Pennsylvania
Source vintage: December 22, 2025; building delivered in 2024. Verified September 14, 2026.

16. Crowley, Crowley Expands Government Supply Chain Services with New Cross-Dock Facility
Source vintage: September 26, 2019. Verified September 14, 2026.

17. Maersk, Maersk speeds up supply chains in Europe with new cross-dock facility
Source vintage: May 14, 2024. Verified September 14, 2026.

18. Maersk, Warehousing and Distribution, delayed cross-dock description
Source vintage: Undated page; checked September 14, 2026. Verified September 14, 2026.

19. Amazon Freight, What is a cross dock and how does it keep LTL freight moving?
Source vintage: July 10, 2026. Verified September 14, 2026.

20. A. Duie Pyle, A. Duie Pyle opens up new facility in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania
Source vintage: Company-hosted report January 9, 2025. Verified September 14, 2026. Company-hosted report; the source page date and its in-progress refresh wording are retained.

21. A. Duie Pyle, A. Duie Pyle Strengthens Northeast Footprint with New Facility Opening in Pennsylvania
Source vintage: Release January 16, 2025; company page January 17, 2025. Verified September 14, 2026.

22. A. Duie Pyle, A. Duie Pyle Expands Northeast Footprint with New LTL Facility in West Virginia
Source vintage: June 16, 2025. Verified September 14, 2026.

23. Roadrunner, Roadrunner Opens New Atlanta Service Center, company release distributed by PR Newswire
Source vintage: April 10, 2024. Verified September 14, 2026. Issuer-authored company release hosted by its newswire distributor, not independent secondary reporting.

24. Yellow Corporation et al., U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, Case 23-11069-CTG, Doc. 1268 and exhibits
Source vintage: Filed December 4, 2023; Exhibits 2 and 4. Verified September 14, 2026. Exhibit 2 supplies successful-bid packages; Exhibit 4 supplies the remaining-property inventory. Package values are not individual sale allocations, and an inventory is not a current operating-status check.

25. XPO, XPO Approved to Acquire 28 Service Centers as Part of Yellow’s Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Process
Source vintage: December 12, 2023. Verified September 14, 2026.

26. NIST, U.S. Survey Foot
Source vintage: International foot definition; checked September 14, 2026. Verified September 14, 2026.

27. NIST, U.S. Survey Foot: Revised Unit Conversion Factors
Source vintage: Current conversion table checked September 14, 2026. Verified September 14, 2026.

28. Cumberland County, Camp Hill Borough
Source vintage: Official locality reference; not a parcel lookup. Verified September 14, 2026. Supports Camp Hill’s county association, not the parcel jurisdiction of every facility using a Camp Hill postal address.

29. Erie County Council, Erie County, Pennsylvania
Source vintage: Official county and county-seat reference. Verified September 14, 2026. Supports the Erie locality/county association, not a survey or parcel-boundary inspection.

Harrisburg Dock Door Repair Research is the independent research and reference section of harrisburgdockdoorrepair.com.

Last verified: September 14, 2026