Logistics & Distribution

Services

• Wholesale Distribution Services
• B2B Fulfillment Services
• Retail Distribution Services
• 3PL Fulfillment Services
• Accounting & AR
• Order Management
• Pick, Pack & Ship Services
• eCommerce Fulfillment
• Logistics & Distribution
• Technology
• Warehousing & Distribution

You won the program. Now you have to service it, and the routing guide runs 40 pages. DPWagner provides logistics and distribution services for manufacturers and brands selling into US big-box retail, where one missed delivery window costs more than the shipment itself. For 25 years we have been on the vendor side of those routing guides, running our own brands through the same doors we run yours.

A Distribution Partner That Has Been the Vendor, Not Just the Warehouse

Most providers learn retail compliance from a manual. We learned it by moving our own manufactured brands into Home Depot, Menards, Walmart, Lowe’s, Costco, Target and absorbing the chargebacks ourselves when we got something wrong. That was a quarter century ago.

The distinction matters because servicing a big-box program is a compliance and execution problem long before it is a transportation problem. Label placement, ASN timing, pallet configuration, appointment scheduling, and case pack accuracy all sit upstream of the truck. Handle those correctly and the delivery is uneventful. Handle them loosely and the load gets turned away at the receiving door.

That means you are working with a team that still has skin in the same game. Our own products move through the same docks, under the same vendor scorecards, on the same retail distribution services your program will run on.

Two Coasts, Shorter Transit Times, One Inventory View

Distribution economics are decided by where your inventory sits before the order ever arrives. We operate roughly 167,500 square feet on the East Coast and roughly 120,000 square feet on the West Coast, which lets us position stock near the regional DCs your retailer wants product delivered into. Shorter lanes, lower accessorial charges, and delivery windows you can actually hit.

For overseas manufacturers, this is also the entry point. We coordinate the import leg and stage your first US inventory position, so a domestic retail program can launch without you standing up an American operation from nothing.

• Approximately 167,500 square feet East Coast and 120,000 square feet West Coast, run by one operating team
• Inbound receiving with container unloading and reconciliation against your purchase order 
• Import coordination and turnkey US market entry for international manufacturers
• Climate-controlled storage for temperature-sensitive and moisture-sensitive SKUs
• Real-time inventory visibility through our virtual warehouse portal, with proactive stock updates from your operations contact 
• Cycle counting and inventory accuracy reporting, with ERP integration available 

Where Retail Programs Actually Break: The Routing Guide

Nearly every failed retail program fails in the same four places, and none of them are the truck.

1. Routing guide interpretation. Every retailer publishes its own rules for labeling, palletizing, appointment scheduling, and carrier selection, and those rules change without much warning. We maintain live working knowledge of the guides for Home Depot, Menards, Walmart, Lowe’s, Costco, Target, and Ace.
2. ASN and EDI timing. An advance ship notice that lands late or malformed earns a chargeback even when the physical shipment was flawless. We are 100% EDI and API ready, so the document trail matches the shipment every time.
3. On time in full performance. OTIF is the number your buyer sees, and it decides whether the program gets renewed, reduced, or handed to someone else. Our standard is 100% on time in full, and the process is built to protect that number rather than react to it after the scorecard arrives. 
4. Vendor scorecard drift. Small errors compound quietly across a quarter until the scorecard slips and the conversation with your buyer changes. We treat yours as a live operating metric, not a report that arrives after the damage is done.

If you have a program on the line and no clear plan for servicing it, book a call with our team and we will walk through your specific retailer requirements before you commit to anything.

Get Product Onto Compliant Lanes Without Buying Trucks

• Pick and pack for retail case pack, mixed pallet, and store-level order profiles
• Retailer dropship programs run to each account’s item, label, and packaging specifications
• LTL and FTL coordination, with carrier selection driven by the routing guide rather than by convenience
• Carrier management and rate negotiation across a vetted domestic network, with import coordination for the inbound ocean leg 
• Appointment scheduling and delivery window management directly with the receiving DC
• BOL accuracy, documentation control, and proof of delivery captured against every load

We manage the lane rather than own the asset, which keeps your cost structure flexible and your carrier options open. Paired with the rest of our 3PL operation, it gives you one accountable partner from the moment a container is opened to the moment a pallet is signed for.

Kitting, Repacking, and Returns Handled Under One Roof

Retail rarely wants product exactly as it left the factory. Displays need assembling, multipacks need building, and packaging needs correcting when a buyer changes the spec late in the cycle. Doing that work in the same building as your inventory removes a transfer, a handoff, and a quiet margin leak.

• Kitting and multipack assembly, including retailer-specific bundles and promotional configurations
• Repacking, relabeling, and rework when packaging fails a retailer specification
• Display and endcap assembly built to the planogram before the shipment leaves the building
• Reverse logistics, RMA processing, and disposition decisions on returned or refused product

Frequently Asked Questions

What is logistics and distribution?

Logistics is the coordination of moving and storing goods: inbound transportation, warehousing, inventory control, and the information flow that ties them together. Distribution is the narrower job of getting finished product from a holding point to the place it will actually be sold. Most companies need both, which is why the two are usually bought together as a single service.

What is the difference between logistics and distribution?

Distribution is a function that sits inside logistics. Logistics covers the whole movement of goods, including inbound freight, storage, and the systems tracking every unit. Distribution focuses on the outbound side: delivering to retailers, stores, or DCs. A simple way to hold it is that logistics is how product gets to and through your warehouse, while distribution is how it gets out of your warehouse and onto a retailer’s shelf.

What does a logistics and distribution company do for a retail vendor?

It receives your inbound inventory, stores it, and then executes orders against your retailer’s exact requirements. For a retail vendor the decisive part is compliance: correct labels, correct pallet builds, on-time advance ship notices, and arrival inside the assigned appointment window. A provider that handles the storage and hands the compliance problem back to you has not solved much, which is the same reason B2B fulfillment is judged differently than consumer order fulfillment.

How do I know if a provider can really handle a big-box program?

Ask which retailer routing guides they work in today and which named accounts they ship to right now. Ask for their OTIF number, and whether they are EDI and API ready without a development project first. Then ask how long they have been doing it, because routing guide fluency is accumulated over years rather than purchased.

Winning the shelf space is the hard part. Serving it should never be the thing that puts the account at risk. If you are working out how to physically deliver on a retail program, book a call with DPWagner and we will map your retailer’s requirements against what your operation can support today.