To close a gap identified in the vehicle routing academic literature a theoretical link is established between the Vehicle Routing Problem and Cross Docking. A model for the vehicle routing problem with shipment consolidation (VRPC), in which vehicles can consolidate cargo among one another at a customer’s location, is presented. With shipment consolidation, vehicles can deliver product to a customer, transfer product to another vehicle, or both. Three main models are proposed: the vehicle routing problem with shipment consolidation (VRPC) which improves routing performance by allowing vehicles to consolidate cargo at any customer site; a metaheuristic to explore the effects of the VRPC over large scale problems; and the Vehicle Routing Problem with Shipment Consolidation and Time Windows (VRPCTW) to further study the proposed concept under extended, more constrained circumstances. Computational experiments are developed and solved to optimality where possible using OPL and Java in conjunction with CPLEX and show that the proposed concept of shipment consolidation can provide significant savings in objective function value when compared to previously published models.