Glossary
Warehousing and 3PL terms, explained plainly
The vocabulary you will hear on a quote call, defined the way we use it on the floor.
Montclair, California · approximately 50 miles from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach
- 3PL (third-party logistics)
- A company that stores, fulfills, and ships inventory owned by other businesses. The Papez Company operates as a 3PL from one family-owned warehouse in Montclair, CA.3PL in the Inland Empire
- Assembly
- Combining components or individual units into a finished, sellable item or set inside the warehouse, such as building multipacks or kits from single units.Assembly & Rework
- B2B fulfillment
- Picking, packing, and shipping orders to other businesses, usually as cases or pallets going to retailers, distributors, or wholesale accounts, rather than parcels to consumers.Pick & Pack Fulfillment
- Bill of lading (BOL)
- The document a carrier issues when it picks up freight. It lists the shipper, consignee, piece count, weight, and freight class, and serves as the receipt and contract of carriage.
- Carrier rate negotiation
- Getting quotes from multiple trucking or parcel carriers for a shipment and negotiating the price and service level before booking. The Papez Company does this for outbound freight from its dock.Freight Shipping & Receiving
- Cross-docking
- Receiving inbound product and moving it directly to outbound shipments with little or no time in storage.
- Drayage
- The short-haul trucking of a shipping container between a port or rail yard and a nearby warehouse. Montclair is approximately 50 miles from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, a normal drayage run.
- DTC (direct-to-consumer) fulfillment
- Picking, packing, and shipping individual parcel orders from an online store to the end customer.E-Commerce Fulfillment
- FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon)
- Amazon's program in which sellers send inventory to Amazon fulfillment centers and Amazon stores, picks, packs, and ships customer orders. Inventory usually needs prep and labeling to Amazon's requirements before it is sent.Amazon & Walmart FBA Forwarding
- FBA prep and forwarding
- Receiving a seller's inventory at a warehouse, preparing it to the marketplace's requirements (labels, poly bags, bundles, cartons, pallets), and shipping it on to the fulfillment center in the lot sizes the seller chooses.Amazon & Walmart FBA Forwarding
- FDA registered facility
- A facility registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Papez Company operates an FDA registered facility; product-specific handling requirements are confirmed during the quote.
- FTL (full truckload)
- A shipment that has the whole trailer to itself, picked up at one dock and delivered to one consignee without being sorted at a terminal.Freight Shipping & Receiving · Related article
- Inventory management
- Keeping every SKU in a known location and recording what came in, what went out, and what is on hand, so product can be retrieved quickly and counts can be reported to the owner.Inventory Management
- Kitting
- Assembling several individual items into one sellable unit or kit before it ships. A form of assembly.Assembly & Rework
- LTL (less-than-truckload)
- A shipment that shares trailer space with freight from other shippers and is sorted through carrier terminals along the way. Priced by weight, freight class, space, and accessorial services.Freight Shipping & Receiving · Related article
- Pick and pack
- The work between an order arriving and a box leaving: finding the items, pulling them from storage, packing them so they arrive intact, labeling, and staging them for the carrier.Pick & Pack Fulfillment
- Put-away
- Moving received product from the dock to its assigned storage location and recording that location.
- Receiving
- Unloading inbound trucks or containers, counting product against the packing list or bill of lading, checking for damage, and reporting discrepancies before put-away.Freight Shipping & Receiving
- Repackaging
- Changing the packaging a product arrived in: new outer cartons, different pack counts, corrected labels, or retail-ready presentation.Assembly & Rework
- Rework
- Correcting product or packaging that is not in sellable or shippable condition: replacing damaged cartons, fixing labels, rebuilding units to a spec.Assembly & Rework
- SKU (stock keeping unit)
- A unique identifier for one sellable product variant. Warehouses store, count, and pick by SKU.
- Transloading
- Unloading product from an inbound container and reloading it onto domestic trucks or into storage, often done at a warehouse near the ports.Related article
- WFS (Walmart Fulfillment Services)
- Walmart's fulfillment network for marketplace sellers, comparable to FBA. Inventory is prepared to Walmart's requirements and forwarded into the network.Amazon & Walmart FBA Forwarding
Still have a term you want defined? Ask the people who use them.
Call or send a quote request and describe your situation in your own words. We will translate.