Third-Party Logistics (3PL) providers build a better supply chain while bringing down operating costs, but what are they?
Turn-Key Logistics
3PL warehouses offer far more than just storage – they’re your supply chain one-stop-shop. Third-Party Logistics delivering to clients a full-featured suite of logistics services: from product transportation, to procurement, to warehousing, to customer order fulfillment. Here’s what partnering with a 3PL service like R&S can do for you:
Warehousing
There’s more to warehousing than you might expect. Where a product is stored and how a warehouse is laid out can determine the ease and rapidity of item retrieval. In a modern warehouse, each item is inventoried and tracked using digital solutions such as RFID tags, ensuring the integrity of inventory data and enabling warehouse staff to quickly locate the appropriate items, wherever they may be. Warehouses can be equipped to handle anything from raw materials to finished goods, from hazardous materials to oversized and heavy items. With the aid of 24/7 closed-circuit monitoring, sensitive items can be stored safely and securely at all times.
If you’re looking to store product, contact us and we can help you find the ideal storage location. Or, find your next warehouse on our warehousing locations page .
Fulfillment
When a 3PL warehouse receives a customer order, the warehouse staff pick all the items in that order, package them together, and prepare them for distribution. Orders often require multiple components, such as the product, instruction sheets and associated literature, a proper label, and sufficient packing material. Each pick and pack is hand assembled, following industry best practices to produce the right package for your customers.
3PL providers can also handle customer returns – what we refer to as reverse logistics. They can receive and process returned orders, catalogue the items, then return them to you for repairs, recycling, or resale.
Distribution
Warehouse location is everything. R&S has facilities conveniently located along major transportation hubs in the southeastern United States, with proximity to major waterways to allow for deep water loading and unloading year-round. Railways and major interstates also form the arteries of a desirable regional distribution network.
Typical trucking and transportation services also include:
- Full Trailer Load (FTL): When your shipment comprises an entire truck or trailer.
- Less Than Truckload (LTL): A shipment that only constitutes a portion of a truck’s capacity.
- Hotshot: For time-sensitive freights.
- Flatbed: For oversized or heavy cargo such as shipping of construction equipment. We also handle the permitting and provide the appropriate escort vehicles.
- Box Vans / Straight Trucks: For smaller shipments, can be refrigerated if needed.
- Last Mile Delivery: Bringing your products right to your customer.
It is important that partner carriers are fully insured and meet or exceed the safety standards set forth by DOT and OSHA.
