B2B Pallet plus D2C Parcel Workflow

One building, two kinds of work, constant friction

At some point in your growth, you wake up with a strange problem. The warehouse is busy all day, but it is not busy doing just one thing. On one side, your team is building pallets, wrapping them tight, and prepping freight for big-box or wholesale customers. On the other side, they are racing through bins, shipping D2C parcels for customers who expect tracking within hours. Same building, same inventory, totally different rhythms. If there is no clear B2B pallet plus D2C parcel workflow, those two rhythms start tripping over each other.

Search behavior shows how common that tension has become. Operators look up phrases like run pallets and D2C from one warehouse, balance B2B freight and ecommerce orders, and fix conflicts between wholesale and D2C shipping. Underneath those searches is the same worry. Brands do not want to choose between their retail partners and their direct customers. They want both to feel like a priority. Their current workflow just is not built to make that happen.

What happens when freight and parcels share a messy plan

When B2B pallets and D2C parcels run through the same facility without a clear workflow, conflict shows up in predictable ways. Pallet builds take over the best staging space, leaving nowhere to prep D2C orders. Parcel volume spikes push staff away from time-sensitive freight loads. Inventory moves to support one side and quietly disappears from the view of the other. In the end, someone misses a retailer delivery window, or D2C orders slip past your same-day cutoff. The warehouse is busy, but the work is not coordinated.

Maureen Milligan hears the fallout from that kind of setup all the time. She said, "Most of the customers who come to us from another 3PL, their challenges have always been access to their data, order accuracy and efficiency, and basically just meeting the committed requirements." Those commitments are different for B2B and D2C, but they are equally real. If your workflow treats them as afterthoughts, your team spends every week apologizing to someone.

One inventory, many shipping shapes

A solid B2B pallet plus D2C parcel workflow starts with inventory, not forklifts. Pallets and parcels must pull from the same accurate inventory pool. The warehouse management system needs to know how many units are on hand, which are sitting in full cases, which are reserved for upcoming POs, and which are available for D2C orders. When inventory is unified, the operation can decide intelligently whether a given unit is going to leave in a parcel, a case, or on a pallet.

Connor Perkins explained why this matters so much to brands. He said, "Our clients get best-in-class visibility and transparency. They can see their daily orders, they can see KPIs, and they can see historical transactions." For a mixed B2B and D2C operation, that visibility only exists if pallets and parcels rely on the same truth about what is actually in the building.

The WMS as referee between pallets and parcels

Once inventory is unified, everything depends on the warehouse management system. A weak WMS treats B2B and D2C as vague categories. A strong one understands that a pallet for a national retailer and a parcel for a single consumer are both critical commitments with different rules. It knows which locations to pick from, which units are reserved, and how to prioritize work under pressure.

Bryan Wright, who designed the WMS used by G10, put the stakes in simple terms. He said, "A bad WMS system will not track inventory 100 percent as it should." In a world of pallets plus parcels, anything less than full accuracy means one side is stealing inventory from the other by accident. Bryan also explained that the system was built for B2B first, then extended to D2C. "If they have a Walmart account that they are trying to bring on, we can turn on the integration. We can create the Walmart-specific shipping label, send them Walmart-specific EDI transaction, pick it in a specific way for Walmart, and all of that stuff is inherent in the software." That same backbone routes D2C parcels through the building without losing sight of what is already tied up in pallet work.

Robots make mixed workflows actually workable

Even the best WMS cannot save an undisciplined floor. B2B pallet work and D2C parcel work put very different demands on a warehouse. One depends on forklifts, case picks, and large staging zones. The other depends on high-velocity small picks and constant movement. If those flows are left to improvise, staff spend half their day wandering and the other half trying not to trip over each other.

Holly Woods described how robotics helps untangle that mess. She said, "The robot is round, it looks like an industrial Roomba," talking about the Zebra robots that carry carts along optimized pick paths. Those paths can support both D2C unit picks and B2B case builds, without forcing workers to guess the most efficient route each time. By standardizing how people move through the building, robots make it easier to keep pallet and parcel workflows synchronized instead of chaotic.

D2C speed plus B2B discipline from the same team

D2C customers have a very simple expectation. They place an order, they get tracking quickly, and the package shows up when promised. B2B customers have expectations that are more complex, but just as serious. They want full shipments, delivered on time, following the routing guide down to the label placement and pallet pattern. A good B2B pallet plus D2C parcel workflow lets the same warehouse staff honor both expectations without being asked to choose which one matters more.

Joel Malmquist explained how cutoffs and rules help D2C stay predictable. Talking about a typical SLA, he said that if an order hits before noon, the goal is to ship that order the same day, and orders after that ship the next day. Those clear rules allow the WMS to enforce D2C speed while still planning B2B work around retailer delivery windows and appointments. The result is not D2C or B2B. It is both, running on one schedule that the system understands.

Planning pallets and parcels together instead of in separate meetings

A strong workflow is not just about the day of ship. It is also about how far ahead the team can plan. Wholesale and retail POs follow forecast cycles and calendar resets. D2C is driven by promotions, influencers, and campaigns that can light up quickly. If planning happens in separate meetings with separate spreadsheets, the first sign of a problem appears when it is already too late.

Holly talked about how G10 approaches that planning challenge. She said, "We do forecast models, staffing models, and we audit inventory, equipment," laying out how the team prepares for big dates on the calendar. Those models matter most in a mixed operation. They make sure that when a retailer pushes a big PO and marketing wants a D2C spike, the warehouse has a way to support both without falling into panic mode.

Stress tests reveal whether the workflow is real or just a slide

You can talk about B2B pallet plus D2C parcel workflow all day, but it only proves itself when the building gets busy. That is when the question becomes simple: can the operation support heavy pallet builds and a flood of D2C orders without missing commitments.

Joel shared a story that answers that question. A client asked whether G10 could handle a scenario where "Target drops 10 POs and gives us 48 hours to turn it around." Joel's response was confident. "Yes we can." That confidence comes from more than just optimism. It comes from multiple sites, strong WMS logic, robotics on the floor, and staff who already know how to run both freight and parcel work as part of the same system.

Customer experience depends on what happens behind the scenes

Your wholesale and retail partners are not walking your aisles. Your D2C customers never see your rack layout. All they feel is the end result of your workflow. Did the shipment arrive on time and in full. Did the parcel show up when promised. When pallets and parcels share a coherent system, the answer is usually yes, and customer service teams feel that difference immediately.

Joel highlighted how G10 structures that communication. "Every single account at G10 has a direct point of contact," he said. That person has one view into B2B and D2C activity, which means they are not juggling conflicting stories. When something slips, they know whether the root cause was a carrier issue, a planning miss, or a demand spike across channels, and they can speak clearly about how it will be fixed.

Institutional knowledge keeps B2B complexity from overwhelming D2C

For founder-led brands that grow up strong in D2C, B2B pallets can feel like someone dropped another language into the middle of the company. There are routing guides, carton rules, pallet requirements, and chargeback codes to decipher. Without experienced people building the workflow, B2B can easily overrun a D2C-first operation.

Jen Myers has watched that play out often. She said, "If you send stuff to Amazon that has the wrong labels on, or it is not to their specs, or the wrong dimensions, you get chargebacks basically they fine you." The same logic holds for other retailers and wholesale partners. When a team brings real B2B experience into a synchronized pallet plus parcel workflow, complexity stops feeling like a threat. It becomes just another set of rules the system already knows how to follow.

A builder mindset behind unified pallet and parcel work

A thoughtful B2B pallet plus D2C parcel workflow reflects a specific kind of ambition. These are brands that do not plan to cap their growth at one channel or one style of fulfillment. They want the volume and credibility that come with strong B2B programs, and the margin and customer intimacy that come with D2C. They are not interested in cutting their goals down to match a fragile operation.

Mark Becker summed up that mindset in one line. He said, "At the end of the day, all we are is builders. The two of us love to build." A clean pallet plus parcel workflow is builder infrastructure. It lets you keep stacking channels and volume without feeling like the warehouse will fall apart the next time a retailer or your own marketing team has a big win.

Next steps toward a calmer, mixed-mode operation

If your pallets and parcels currently feel like they are arguing for attention, the issue is not demand. It is workflow. B2B pallet plus D2C parcel workflow solves that by giving every order the same warehouse management system, unified inventory, and coordinated physical processes, with channel-specific rules layered on top instead of carved into separate tracks.

With that structure in place, your team can plan wholesale programs and D2C campaigns together instead of treating them as competing priorities. Your partners see reliability. Your customers see consistency. Inside the building, pallets and parcels finally look less like rival projects and more like two shapes of the same healthy, growing business.