Warehouse Makes Shipping Efficient for Trucking Firms

Joe Edwards came upon an unusual warehousing idea by accident. Ten years later, it’s no accident that Edwards is looking to grow that warehouse business even further.

Northwest Arkansas Bonded & Public Warehouse Inc. of Springdale is believed to be the only bonded warehouse in the two-county area. Sitting on 10 acres just off Thompson Street in south Springdale, the warehouse currently has 125,000 SF of space. Edwards hopes to expand it to 200,000 SF by the end of the year.

NWA Bonded offers inventory management for a wide array of customers, including those imported products that have to be put behind lock and key before the U.S. Customs Service releases them. Customers don’t have to pay tariffs or import duties until the products clear customs.

The warehouse, which has eight employees, stores general commodities in a dry-storage environment. It is served by the Arkansas & Missouri Railroad via Burlington Northern. It has 14 loading bays for trucks. And NWA Bonded has three trucks and six trailers in its fleet, helping customers deliver their products from the warehouse to their clients. They offer delivery within a 100-mile radius of Springdale.

Peggy Edwards is the general manager of NWA Bonded. She said Joe Edwards, her father-in-law, built an 8,000-SF facility. While he was waiting for a client to move into the warehouse, he offered to store their products. It was then that he discovered the need for such a warehouse.

Space is leased by the pallet at NWA Bonded. Prices vary depending on the product, how it’s delivered, how it’s shipped and how much space the customer is leasing.

Peggy Edwards said one of her best customers is Rockline-Midwest Inc., which has a factory in Springdale. It also services many vendors of the poultry firms in Northwest Arkansas.

“It’s a great concept,” said Peggy Edwards. “There are so many ways it can benefit a company.”

She gave several examples. A customer in Chattanooga, Tenn., supplies cleaning solutions for poultry firms in the area but was accustomed to shipping one or two pallets as needed by the customer. With NWA Bonded, the Chattanooga firm can ship a truckload at once and store what’s not needed immediately. And when its customer does need the product, it can be delivered much quicker and at far less cost to both sides.

“A lot of the poultry firms don’t have a lot of storage space,” Peggy Edwards said. “They would have normally had about 12 shipments if they couldn’t store it here. That would have been very expensive.”

Many companies outside the area can’t justify putting an office or warehouse in Northwest Arkansas, but they may still have many clients. With NWA Bonded, once the customer receives an order from one of its clients, the client can have it shipped quicker directly from the warehouse — or even faster if the customer drives to the warehouse to pick it up.

The regional phone books were also stored at NWA Bonded while temporary workers distributed them throughout the area.

“There was no need for those people with the phone books to rent a building for six months,” Edwards said. “The distributors just came by and picked up what they needed until the they were all out.”

There are also people working out of their homes in the area who don’t have storage space, yet provide customers with many different products. A couple of NWA Bonded’s customers sell office supplies.

“They’ll back their truck up two or three times a day and head out,” Edwards said.

The warehouse has fire and burglar alarms and a sprinkler system.

Edwards also said the company is getting a new computer system and will bar code everything.

“We’ll know where every pallet is at all times,” she said. “And our customers will be given a personal password where they’ll be able to access their inventory at their home or office.”