Public Warehousing in St. Louis: Why Public Warehousing?

Most public warehouses provide turnkey services for your supply chain

Public warehousing in St. Louis can be a valuable part of your company’s supply chain. In many ways, public warehousing services do for your logistics department what cloud computing services do for your IT department. They offer access to the space and services you need when you need them and usually come with a usage-based pricing model that is economically efficient.

The Basics of Public Warehousing in St. Louis

A public warehouse is much more than a place to rent pallet space by the day. Public warehousing facilities can offer everything that you would want to have in your own warehouse. They handle receiving, storage, shipping, fulfillment, inventory management  and comprehensive technology. In addition, public warehouse providers have their own staff.

Most public warehouses provide turnkey services for the parts of the supply chain that they cover. They also bear the costs of providing those services, including owning and maintain the physical space, purchasing software and systems and compensating staff. In exchange for what they offer, they provide a demand-sensitive pricing structure that gets tied to the amount of space that gets used, the time span for which it is used and the actual level of service that they provide.

Location

A key part of choosing a partner is its location. Public warehousing in St. Louis offers significant geographic benefits. With a central location in the country, it can serve most of America’s population within a one- or two- day drive thanks to its location at the intersection of Interstates 55, 70, 64 and 44. In addition, St. Louis has extensive rail service, year-round river shipping on the Mississippi and air cargo service.

Technology

Public warehousing in St. Louis doesn’t have to be completely separate from your business. Many facilities offer their own advanced technology system that can provide a data feed into your warehouse management or ERP systems. Others can run your software for you and act as a node in your larger logistics infrastructure.

Flexibility

For many companies, the key benefit of public warehousing in St. Louis or elsewhere is the flexibility that it offers. Whether your have a large shipment that needs to be divided up and shipped out to retail locations or regional distribution centers or you need to handle stock for seasonal demand peaks, a public warehouse can fill in when your existing infrastructure cannot handle the load.

Public warehouses also help when you are making changes to your supply chain structure. If you need to expand a warehouse or are waiting for a new one to finish construction, you could end up with a temporary shortage of space as things get worse before they get better. Using public warehousing services can fill that gap, too.

Short vs. Long-Term

For many companies, public warehousing is a short-term solution to short-term problems. However, some companies choose to build a long-term relationship with a public warehousing provider. Using public warehousing or including them as part of a larger package of 3PL services gives you access to everything you need for your supply chain. With facilities like Clark’s public warehousing in St. Louis offering a full package of best-of-breed technologies and capabilities, your business can get the best possible staff, technology and facility without having to bear the cost and inconvenience of building, maintaining or operating it.

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