A look inside the Lehigh Valley’s newest mega-warehouse
Even though it was a dreary Tuesday morning, it was bright inside Uline’s new East Coast Distribution Center in Lower Macungie Township.
The 930,000-square-foot warehouse, which opened Sept. 19, was shining and nearly spotless as construction workers put some finishing touches in some areas and Uline workers were busy processing orders and stocking shelves in others.
The new building, at the Spring Creek development on Congdon Hill Drive near Alburtis, will serve as Uline’s distribution center for the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic areas. It takes over from a similar facility in Wisconsin as customer demand for Uline’s shipping, industrial and packaging materials has grown, especially in the Lehigh Valley. It’s the company’s first distribution center outside of the Midwest and allows Uline to enhance its next-day service for customers.
According to Chris Tedesco, Uline’s East Coast distribution manager, Pennsylvania has about a quarter of the company’s customers.
Wade Goff, senior director of distribution, said it was logical to put the center near its established Lehigh Valley branch in Upper Macungie Township, which sends its products to customers at many of the other warehouses in the Valley.
“We decided to put a distribution building out by our largest branch and we’re also opening one up in Ontario, California, for our California branch, which is the second largest,” Goff said. “We’ve been here for years. I come out here probably once a month or so and after the first building that we built, the expansion and growth of this area was just large. So it’s natural for us to kind of partner with the businesses in the area and supply the product.”
The building will initially run 24 hours a day, six days a week as shelves continue to get stocked. It will serve as a gathering point for about 12,000-16,000 of the most popular products from Uline’s 40,000–product catalog. Trucks from Wisconsin will unload on one end, and orders, which will be shipped to Upper Macungie for delivery to customers, will go out the other.
“The goal of this is to get better customer service on the East Coast,” Goff said. “Now we’re feeding them directly. We shipped by trucks from Wisconsin every night out to Pennsylvania. Now the goal is to say ‘what’s the best-selling product?’ Let’s store it out here, posted to the largest branch. So we’re trying to up the customer service level.”
Forklifts, which can reach up 36 feet to the top shelf, carry pallets, while smaller loads can be moved by employees peddling bright yellow tricycles that can carry 450 pounds. One area is set up to break down larger pallets for smaller orders.
Two companies with Pennsylvania plants, Yazoo Mills, which makes shipping tubes, and WestRock, which manufactures corrugated containers, can ship directly to Lower Macungie rather than to Wisconsin and back.
Uline, which came to the Valley in 2004 and employs about 1,000 people here, said it’s looking to hire for about 28 more jobs, adding to the 70 already at the new warehouse. Wages start at $25 an hour.
The goal, Goff said, is to find a workforce that will remain with the company for years. A hiring event for additional workers was scheduled for Tuesday.
Based in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, Uline is a 40-year-old family business with 8,500 workers nationwide.
According to commercial real estate company CBRE, the Lehigh Valley has an inventory of 110.2 million square feet of industrial space with 7.4 million square feet under construction.
The distribution center is on land owned by Liberty Property Limited Partnership, which acquired the property in 2016 from Lehigh Valley developer David Jaindl, Lehigh County property records show. It opened its Lehigh Valley operations in 2004.