Online and virtual business that sell goods out of the state where their physical warehouse and factory are located nearly always operate their sales and logistics through multi-state and multi-country warehousing companies. The major advantage of using large-scale warehousing company services is the convenience for your customers and the logistics advantages for your company. The cost of real estate for warehousing inventory is high. The cost of labor involved in the warehousing, packaging, and shipping functions is also high. The cost of labor for packaging, addressing, and s ..read more

What Is A Lumper Service? A lumper service is a group of workers hired by a shipper or carrier to help with the loading or unloading freight from trucks or trailers at a dock. Many shippers and carriers hire lumper services, but they are most common in food warehouses. Lumper services are provided by third parties hired by shippers and receivers to work in their docks. The third parties are companies that specialize in lumper services. These companies employ professionals who understand the nuances of loading and unloading trucks and trailers. Lumper services regularly work in the docks and e ..read more

Choosing the right 3PL partner is critical to saving your company time, money, and potential headache. Whether you are a B2B or B2C oriented company, be sure to understand what to look for when selecting a partner for your warehousing, supply chain and logistics needs. Have a clear definition of what you are looking for, your product details, and what to check off in terms of the service offering that will help you save time and money. Below we dive into a few factors to consider when you are shopping for 3PL services – especially in cases where you ship larger, LTL orders. Product Needs Must ..read more

Warehousing and fulfillment – two words that bring up mental images of huge structures, palletized goods, and complex shipping rules. Some large brands have the resources to tackle these processes on their own. Many small businesses, however, tend to struggle to find the warehousing and fulfillment solutions that work best for them. Recent shifts are altering that landscape further, as e-commerce selling and marketplaces grow in popularity. What was once a drab, uninteresting industry has transformed into something much “sexier.” Budding interest in the sector has brought a lot ..read more

The COVID-19 pandemic is sending shockwaves throughout global supply chains, so it’s no surprise to learn that US and Canadian warehousing and fulfillment industry is experiencing significant impact as well. In order to gauge the short-term ramifications of this deadly virus on fulfillment providers throughout the US and Canada, we conducted a poll of the 600+ warehouses in our network. In the poll, we asked these five questions: Are you currently open and shipping orders for customers? Has your overall order volume for all of your customers remained the same, decreased, or increased as a res ..read more

Barcode scanning is a critical part of the overall inventory management, fulfillment and shipping process that doesn’t seem to get as much attention as other warehouse functions. Without it, warehouse operations are subject to human error, leaving receiving, inventory, fulfillment and shipping errors with a chance to flourish. But when barcode scanning technologies are implemented and used properly, warehouse staff can operate with extremely low levels of errors – which is critical in our world of high-stakes e-commerce fulfillment and delivery. The entire fulfillment process (receiving, inven ..read more

Packaging supplies play an essential role in every business that sells a physical product. Keeping your products safe and appealingly presenting them are the two core functions of custom packaging – be it primary or secondary packaging. But all too often, finding the best packaging solution is left to the last minute and an ‘adequate’ packaging solution is implemented in the form of off the shelf packaging. While these standard packaging products get the job done, it’s costly to scale and ends up burning a lot of your cash. That’s where value-engineered packaging comes in. In this article, yo ..read more

While a number of brick-and-mortar stores are facing closure, Amazon and other e-commerce sites have experienced record sales. Rick Stein of the Urban Decision Group notes 30,000 store closures in the past five years. In the first few months of 2020, 2,000 have closed with an additional 15,000 more expected by the end of the year. At the start of 2020, department stores occupied 30% of all mall space. Fifty percent of those stores anticipate closures by the end of 2021. Can Brick-and-Mortar Stores Survive? Although some stores have reopened, many retailers aren’t able to survive business disr ..read more

Each year, insightQuote conducts a warehousing cost and pricing survey, and we now have our results in from our survey concluded for 2021. Some incredible insights came out of this venture that we would like to share with the world. Before we get to that, we need to be clear about some of the assumptions that this survey makes so that people will understand how we tabulated the results that we received and what they mean in context. Our Methodology for the 2021 Survey The data that we collected was not connected back to the specific warehouse that answered the question. In other words, the an ..read more

What Is A Lumper Service? A lumper service is a group of workers hired by a shipper or carrier to help with the loading or unloading freight from trucks or trailers at a dock. Many shippers and carriers hire lumper services, but they are most common in food warehouses. Lumper services are provided by third parties hired by shippers and receivers to work in their docks. The third parties are companies that specialize in lumper services. These companies employ professionals who understand the nuances of loading and unloading trucks and trailers. Lumper services regularly work in the docks and ei ..read more