A 3PL’s Shipping and Receiving services offer unique advantages to retailers and online sellers who want to scale. Small businesses often start out of a gargare or shared warehouse space. Similarly, retail stores need to monitor how much money they spend per square foot on a lease. Shipping and receiving operations can eat up quite a bit of this space. Let’s look at how a 3PL’s Shipping and Receiving department can benefit folks without alot of operating space.
3PL Receiving
The receiving department of a 3PL serves to monitor and organize all inbound traffic. From parcels, to pallets a receiving agent will supervise the delivery of goods into the facility and sign any paperwork related to the delivery.
Parcel Receiving
Parcel Receving occurs when a shipping courier such as FedEx or UPS delivers a shipment of cartons to a 3PL’s receiving department. Shipping Marks help easily identify a parcel. Shipping Marks include the following info labeled on the side of a package:
- Company Name
- Product
- Product FNSKU
- Unit Count/Carton
- Weight
- Dimensions
- MADE IN CHINA
These shipping marks allow our staff to identify and organize cartons by SKU with speed and accuracy. If the client provides a Packing List, the receiving staff should check the carton quantities per SKU delivered. There is no BOL to be signed.
Pallet Receiving
In terms of 3PL shipping and receiving for pallets – it’s a different processing protocol. First, there is a BOL that is provided to the receiving agent by the delivery driver. Both parties need to sign a copy for the other party. Each party leaves with copy of the BOL signed by the other party confirming the delivery.
In addition, the receiving agent conducts a swift quality control inspection for any damage on the goods. The agent also confirms how many cartons per SKU were delivered and keeps them organized on corresponding pallets for storage. A 3PLs Shipping and Receiving protocol employs these measures to ensure quality control within the supplychain. No missing cartons. No damaged parcels.
Between 3PL Receiving and Shipping – The Storage Phase
In between 3PL shipping and receiving services is storage. As mentioned above, the staff take measures to account for received items, in order to plug the products into storage. Thereafter, a Warehouse Management System (WMS) coridnates storage organization. This allows the 3PL to monitor your goods and pull them at a moments notice, when a client requests shipping for a product.
3PL Shipping
Parcel Shipping
Warehouses ship parcels for a number of reasons to a number of destinations. Lets look at some examples:
- Business-To-Business Parcel Shipping: 3PL shipping and receiving can move products from suppliers directly to businesses by parcel
- Fulfilment Center Parcel Shipping: 3PLs often ship parcels to Amazon fulfilment centers for re-ups on inventory to prevent stock outs in their FBA program.
- Direct-To-Consumer Parcel Shipping: Often times customers buy in bulk. 3PL’s ship parcels directly to customers.
Pallet Shipping
Pallet shipping services serve sellers who move inventory in bulk. 3PLs Ship pallets by Full Trailor Load (FTL) or by Lessthan Trailor Load (LTL). Any shipments which do not require an entire trailor to load are reffered to as an LTL. On the other side of this definition, LTL loads share shipments stored in it.
Pallet ship starts by building cartons onto a wood pallet. If the pallet is “mixed” then, picking and packing the right cartons onto a pallet is important. If the pallet is destined to a fulfillment center for Amazon or Walmart, cartons need to be labled for check-in purposes. Afterwards, the 3PL shrink wraps the pallet and labels the shrunk wrapped pallet appropriately. From there, the pallet is ready for shipping. A 3PL will use a pallet jack and lift gate or fork lift and pallet jack to load the pallet onto a trailor.
