TL;DR: Growing 173% in one year as a 3PL means outgrowing facility capacity, rebuilding WMS workflows, and solving edge cases in real time. The biggest lesson: high growth breaks every process not built for scale. Brands evaluating 3PLs should ask how their partner handles growth — not just current volume, but what happens when volume doubles.
We grew 173% last year. We opened a second facility, signed dozens of new clients, and built a technology platform from scratch. It was also a year of building operational systems, solving edge cases, and smoothing out the experience for clients in real time. From the outside, it probably looked like a success story.
From the warehouse floor, it looked like controlled chaos.
I want to talk about what high growth actually does to a fulfillment operation, because I think there’s a gap between what brands expect from their 3PL and what’s physically happening behind the scenes. Understanding this doesn’t just make you a better partner. It makes your supply chain work better.
When pallets don’t fit
Here’s a simple math problem. Our primary facility has capacity for about 6,000 pallets. When business is growing 173% year over year, you don’t get a nice linear increase that gives you time to plan. You get surges. Seasonal spikes. New clients onboarding simultaneously. And one morning you come in and realize you’re sitting on 8,000 pallets in a space built for 6,000.
When a warehouse is over capacity, everything slows down. Aisles get tighter. Forklifts can’t maneuver efficiently. The team that normally picks 200 orders an hour is now picking 150 because they’re navigating around overflow pallets. Receiving backs up because there’s nowhere to stage new inventory. The knock-on effects hit every part of the operation.
We solved it by opening a second facility. But the transition period, where the first building was overflowing and the second wasn’t ready yet, was one of the hardest stretches we’ve had as a company. Inventory had to be shuffled between buildings. Processes that worked at one location had to be rebuilt for two. Every inefficiency cost real money.
The 40-foot surprise
There’s a scenario that plays out more often than you’d think. A 40-foot container shows up at our dock with no advance notice. No ASN. No heads up. Just a truck backing in and a driver saying, “Where do you want it?”
A floor-loaded container takes four to five people roughly two hours to unload. Those people were in the middle of fulfilling orders. Now they’re pulled off their stations, orders slow down, and every other client’s shipments are affected. Not because anything went wrong with their account, but because the warehouse just absorbed an unplanned hit.
When a client sends an advance shipment notification even a day or two ahead, we can schedule dock time, allocate labor, and stage the space. The difference between planned and unplanned receiving isn’t a small operational detail. It’s the difference between the whole facility running smoothly and the whole facility adjusting on the fly.
The mystery pallet
This one is my favorite, in the way that you have a favorite headache.
A shipment arrives with no labels on the packages. No packing slip. No reference to a PO number. Just boxes. They could belong to any of our 150+ clients.
So now someone on our team has to play detective. They open a box, try to identify the product, cross-reference it against active client inventories, and start making calls. “Did you send us a shipment today? No? How about you?” Sometimes it takes half a dozen calls to track down the owner. Meanwhile, the shipment sits on the dock taking up space and labor hours, and the clock is ticking on that dock appointment window.
This is the kind of overhead that’s invisible to clients. Nobody thinks about what happens when their freight arrives without identification, because on their end they just dropped it at a carrier and moved on. But on our end, it’s a real cost that ripples across the operation.
The point isn’t to complain
I’m sharing these examples because I think brands genuinely don’t know. And that’s our fault as much as anyone’s. The 3PL industry has done a poor job of making warehouse operations visible to the people we serve.
When a brand understands that their 3PL is running a complex, interconnected operation where one disruption affects dozens of other clients, the relationship changes. You go from vendor and customer to partners working the same problem.
A few things that make a bigger difference than most brands realize:
Send advance shipment notifications. Even a rough one. “We have a pallet arriving Thursday” is infinitely better than a truck showing up unannounced. It lets us plan labor, clear dock space, and keep your receiving time fast.
Label everything. Your company name, a PO number, anything that lets us identify it on arrival. Thirty seconds of prep on your end saves hours on ours.
Communicate volume changes early. If you’re running a promotion that’s going to triple your order volume for a week, tell us. We can staff for it. If we find out when the orders start flooding in, we’re scrambling, and your ship times will show it.
Understand that warehouse capacity is physical. It sounds obvious, but a warehouse can’t stretch. When we’re at capacity, every new pallet affects maneuverability, pick speed, and accuracy. If we ask you to reduce on-hand inventory or stagger shipments, it’s not because we don’t want your business. It’s because we’re trying to maintain the service level you expect.
Growth is a good problem
I want to be clear: 173% growth is a good problem to have. We wouldn’t trade it. Every one of these challenges taught us something, and we came out the other side with better systems, better processes, and the operational maturity that only comes from solving real problems under real pressure.
But growth doesn’t happen in a spreadsheet. It happens in a building with real people, real equipment, and real physical constraints. The brands that understand that tend to get the best results from their fulfillment partners. Not because they’re doing us a favor, but because supply chain performance is a team sport.
We’re building Thrive to be transparent about this stuff. If you want a 3PL that tells you the truth about what’s happening with your inventory, even when the truth is “we’re figuring it out,” that’s us. See how our technology keeps you informed or get a quote.
Eric Lobdell is the founder of Thrive 3PL, a Houston-based fulfillment company working with 150+ e-commerce brands.