It’s a scary idea to think about an outside source handling your product, and we get that. But the time and money saved through outsourcing storage and distribution to a professional logistics company can be huge for companies of all sizes. Using a 3PL to handle the logistics for your products can be beneficial in many different scenarios. Start-up companies outgrowing the small spaces that they began with can find refuge by not handling the storage and distribution by themselves and using some of the billions of square feet of public warehouse space available to them throughout the world. Fortune 500 companies can cut costs and find extra efficiency or support by outsourcing all or even just part of their supply chain to a logistics expert. The benefits of a third party logistics operation are easy to see.
What goes on behind the scenes in a third party warehouse? We are starting a new series that will be popping up every couple of weeks as a way to show our readers the efficiency, precision and care that can be achieved through a 3PL warehouse. Each warehouse is different, but knowing some of the basics that go on in many can make outsourcing a little bit less stressful.
Serving multiple customers that all have different amounts of space is where a 3PL excels. Each account has a flexible wall that can handle more or less product at any given time, leading to a large variety of customers on board.
At Murphy, we serve numerous customers, filling an entire warehouse all the way down to customers with just a couple of pallets.
We also store product ranging from small trinkets to huge lumber piles. We have some warehouses loaded with food ingredients and others with multiple customers and a variety of products. A warehouse full of large product stacked to the ceiling is a pretty crazy sight, as is seeing a warehouse filled with racking and small items stored at peak efficiency.
With services ranging from pallet moves to single-item shipments, there are a lot of different things going on in a warehouse. Efficiency is key, so keeping similar accounts near each other makes a lot of sense most of the time.
Some of the many services we provide include:
Servicing over 250 accounts daily.
Handling over 30,000 orders per month with 29,000 SKUs
Full pallet moves by the truckload
Case pick and re-palletize by order
Pick-and-pack orders as small as one item for parcel shipments
Light manufacturing for multiple lines of product
Check out our Services page to learn more.
Counting, lifting, driving, walking… lots of walking! These are just a couple of things that people are doing throughout the day. Crews are working at peak efficiency, and things are always moving out in a warehouse. It is actually very interesting to see a project in motion, you find workers using their communication, organization, and physical skills to get the job done together.
