COVID-19 and 3PL Warehouses
What effect has COVID-19 had on 3PL warehouse operations?
With some businesses, like grocery and personal protection equipment, seeing massive spikes in demand and other industries like brick-and-mortar retail completely frozen, we wanted to find out what affects COVID-19 was having on our customers. So we asked.
In early April 2020, using a short online survey, we asked our customers a few questions to see how they are being impacted. 16 percent of responders said COVID-19 has not affected their business. Of the 84 percent that are experiencing an impact, 44 percent are somewhat or much busier. Also surprising was that some responders are gaining new customers and no one reported losing customers. See below for the results of the survey as well as open comments.
In what industries does your company operate?
How many employees does your company have?
Has the coronavirus (COVID-19) situation had an impact on your business?
Surprisingly, 16 percent of the responders said that the coronavirus has not impacted their business.
How has the coronavirus (COVID-19) impacted your business?
Also surprising that 44% of those affected say that the coronavirus has made them somewhat or much busier.
In what ways has the coronavirus (COVID-19) impacted your business?
We also wanted to see in what ways the coronavirus has impacted their business. Of those that responded, 6 have added new customers and no one said they were losing customers.
Has the coronavirus (COVID-19) situation affected your pricing?
Also surprising that a few customers have actually raised prices.
What are the biggest changes, if any, you expect your business to have as a result of the COVID-19 situation? (open answer)
- None
- Too early to fully assess
- Keeping drivers at a distance in the office. Restricting access to warehouses (already done to some extent). Additional sanitizing procedures in offices and bathrooms. There is an ultraviolet light I would like to see installed in the office, that would almost instantly sterilize.
- Difficulty in getting employees to show up due to problems with health and child care. Additional costs related to sanitation and social distancing.
- Initially, we were significantly busier, but now we are a few weeks in and it seems to have plateaued. I expect business to slow as the consumer demand lowers.
- Our inventory received had increased and is now light. The biggest changes are implementing the protections necessary to protect our employees and visitors. We are following GCCA guidelines.
- Reduced head count.
- No changes at this point
- Increased storage demand as the supply chain will be beefed up by manufacturers due to the virus.
- Customers not paying because they are not working
- FTZ business has picked up due to many end supplies being closed and inbound product delayed.
- Retail food products are shipping out faster than what they can bring in. The warehouse will have lots of room.
- Reduced schedule
- Assuming things get back to normal, we should go back to business as usual.
- Two concerns:
1. If our office or warehouse staff become infected we could be forced to shut down.
2. We have a lot of product coming in if our client’s customers slow down placing orders we could easily be overrun with inbound product. - More business. We have quite a few new business opportunities that are presenting themselves during this unique situation. Hopefully, there will be some laborers to hire through and after things settle. I expect everyone is going to want to work from home every day after this is all said and done–going to be hard to get admin to want to come back to work!!
- Higher demand for storage of food products.