How FLOX Works
The Golden Triangle around the M1/M6/M42 corridor did not emerge by accident. Planning consent, road infrastructure investment and labour catchment areas compounded over decades, making certain postcodes almost inevitable choices for large-format distribution. Those same forces continue to pull new supply into existing clusters rather than spreading it.
For a shipper whose customers are concentrated in the North West, Scotland or the South West, following the hub can mean adding meaningful transit time and cost back in. The premium for off-hub space is real, but so is the cost of the extra miles. Neither answer is automatically right: it depends on order profile, carrier density in the target region and how quickly your carrier base can actually serve your postcodes from a given location.
The practical framework is straightforward. Map your delivery postcodes against drive-time isochrones from each candidate location, then weight by order volume. A hub site that covers 80 per cent of your volume within four hours may outperform a closer site with weaker carrier coverage. Where volume thins out, shared capacity through a marketplace model can absorb the tail without locking you into a fixed lease in a sub-optimal location.
