Designing a Flexible West Coast Inbound and Distribution Strategy
Company Overview
Outdoor Cap is a privately held headwear manufacturer founded in 1977 and headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company designs, develops, and distributes headwear across retail, promotional products, licensed goods, and private label channels. With global manufacturing partners across Asia and a diverse customer base across North America, Outdoor Cap operates a complex international supply chain that requires reliable inbound logistics and responsive domestic distribution.
The Challenge
As Outdoor Cap’s business grew, its existing West Coast warehouse model began to create both cost and operational challenges.
Their facility in Rancho Cucamonga was facing a 60% rent increase, which would have significantly impacted their cost structure and long-term operating model. At the same time, the location and operating model limited scalability, flexibility, and transportation efficiency.
Outdoor Cap needed to:
• Reduce fixed warehouse costs
• Improve inbound and outbound freight flow
• Increase flexibility to handle seasonal volume swings
• Support faster delivery to customers, especially on the West Coast
• Build a more scalable logistics model for future growth
The goal was not just to cut costs, but to find a partner that could improve performance while supporting long-term growth.
The Solution
Outdoor Cap partnered with Knight-Swift Supply Chain to design a cross-dock and freight trapping solution on the West Coast.
Today, Outdoor Cap uses Knight-Swift for:
• Cross-docking ocean containers from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach
• Transloading 40’ containers into 53’ trailers for inland distribution
• Freight trapping for urgent or West Coast customer orders
• Integration with Outdoor Cap’s ERP system for seamless processing and visibility
This allows Outdoor Cap to:
• Move freight directly from port to distribution without long-term storage costs
• Ship urgent orders directly from California instead of routing everything through their owned facility in Arkansas
• Use truckload or intermodal depending on cost and timing
• Scale volume up and down based on seasonal demands
The Results
The partnership resulted in meaningful improvements across cost, speed, and reliability.
Annual Volume Through Knight-Swift:
• ~400 import containers per year (growing to 450–500)
• Converted into ~220–230 full truckload shipments
• 2–3% of freight trapped and shipped directly to customers from California
Operational Improvements:
• Reduced fixed warehouse costs
• Improved freight velocity
• Faster delivery to West Coast customers
• More predictable outbound execution
• Scalable model that supports seasonal volume swings
• Reliable and consistent execution from the operations team
Rather than a traditional warehouse model, the solution was designed specifically around Outdoor Cap’s inbound flow, seasonality, and customer distribution patterns, creating a more flexible and cost-effective network.
Implementation & Partnership
According to Outdoor Cap, the Knight-Swift team took a highly collaborative approach to implementation. The team worked to understand inbound flows, seasonal demand swings, outbound requirements, and cost pressures before designing the operation.
The result was a customized cross-dock and distribution model built specifically around Outdoor Cap’s business.
Today, our partnership continues to grow, with Outdoor Cap evaluating additional services such as fulfillment support as their network evolves.
Summary
By partnering with Knight-Swift Supply Chain, Outdoor Cap was able to transition away from a high fixed-cost warehouse model and implement a more flexible West Coast logistics strategy that improves speed, scalability, and cost control while supporting continued growth.
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