Every brand wants a big fourth quarter. Every 3PL wants one too. The difference is that the warehouse has to staff for it weeks in advance, with real people, on days it cannot predict unless you tell it. This piece is about the three things that decide whether peak goes well: a forecast the warehouse can plan against, capacity that is actually planned, and the habits that keep both sides working together when something breaks.
Part 1Forecast actual volumes by day
A 3PL runs on labor. Pickers, packers, receivers and the people on the dock are the biggest cost in the building, and the way a warehouse makes or loses money is by matching that labor to the orders that arrive. Too few people and orders miss their cutoff. Too many and the margin is gone. Labor planning is the whole game, and the input to labor planning is your forecast.
Brands tend to think more volume is always better. For the warehouse it is not. Expected volume is good: it is staffed, scheduled and priced. Unexpected volume hurts everyone. A day that comes in 40 percent above plan means overtime, temp labor that has never seen your product, a dock that backs up, and the errors and missed cutoffs that come with all three. Your customers see the late orders. Your 3PL eats the cost. Nobody wins.
A forecast is not a number for the quarter. It is a number for each day.
Give your 3PL a day-by-day forecast for the peak window, and give it early. Start from last year's daily curve if you have one, then layer on what you know will be different: planned promotions, email sends, a new channel, a product launch, the dates you will advertise as last-day-to-order. Update it weekly through October and November, and daily through the big week. A forecast that is 20 percent off but updated every week is far more useful than a perfect-looking spreadsheet from September that nobody touched again.
- Orders per day, not just units, because the warehouse staffs to orders.
- The spike days: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the day after your biggest email, the last ship date for Christmas delivery.
- Inbound inventory dates, since receiving competes with picking for the same people.
- What you are unsure about. A range is fine. Silence is not.
Make sure the capacity is really planned
Every 3PL will tell you it is ready for peak. The useful question is what, specifically, has been planned, and the answers fall into three areas.
Labor. How many people are being added, from where, and when they start. Temp labor that arrives the week of Thanksgiving has not been trained on your product. Ask when training happens and whether your SKUs are part of it.
Carriers and the dock. On the extreme days, the limiting factor is often not picking but getting the parcels out of the building. Does the 3PL have the relationships with its carriers to add dropped trailers, so a full trailer can be swapped for an empty one without waiting for a scheduled pickup? Have those extra pickups and swaps been requested already, or is the plan to call on the day? The carriers are at capacity on those days too, and the warehouses that get the extra trailers are the ones that asked in October.
Your order profile. This is the one brands most often miss. Sales and marketing decisions change what an order looks like, and the warehouse plans around what an order looks like. A client that averages two picks per order all year and then runs a holiday bundle promotion that pushes it to five picks per order has more than doubled the labor in every order, without the order count moving at all. If nobody told the 3PL, the staffing plan was wrong before the first promotion email went out.
Two picks per order in October. Five in December. If your 3PL hears about it from the pick list, it is already too late.
Before you lock the promotional calendar, walk the 3PL through it. Bundles, gift sets, buy-two-get-one offers, free gifts with purchase, new packaging, inserts: each one changes picks, pack time, box size or all three. The warehouse can plan for any of them. It cannot plan for a surprise.
Part 3Tips and tricks for the season
- Communicate often. A standing weekly call from early October, moving to a daily check-in through the big week. Short is fine. Skipping is not.
- Pre-bundle the high movers. If a kit or gift set is going to be a top seller, build it as a single SKU before peak, when labor is cheap and calm, rather than assembling it order by order in December. One pick instead of five.
- Get inventory in early. Receiving in peak competes with picking for the same people. Product that arrives in October is on the shelf; product that arrives the week of Black Friday is in the way.
- Agree the cutoffs and last ship dates in writing, and publish the same dates to your customers that you agreed with your warehouse.
- Plan the carrier fallback. Know which service the 3PL will move orders to if the primary carrier is struggling with capacity, and what it costs.
- Tell the warehouse before you tell the world. If a promotion is going out, the 3PL should hear about it before your email list does.
And one that is not a trick. Peak is where relationships between brands and 3PLs are solidified or torn apart. Issues will arise: a carrier will struggle with capacity, a shipment will arrive late, a day will come in far above the forecast. How each side handles those moments decides whether you are planning next year's peak together or looking for a new provider in January. Pick up the phone, assume good faith, and fix the problem before you assign the blame.
Choosing a 3PL before next peak?
Run the benchmark on the home page, then book a free 20-minute call. We will tell you which kind of provider fits and what to ask about peak capacity on the intro calls.