Running Out of Room Before Peak Season? How Overflow Warehousing Works

Every fall the same call comes in. Holiday inventory is landing six weeks early, the warehouse is already full, and the containers keep coming. Renewing a lease or adding a building for a problem that lasts twelve weeks makes no sense. Overflow warehousing does: you rent the pallet positions you need, for the months you need them, in a building that also has the trucks to move the freight back out. That is what our 200,000 sq ft Mississauga warehouse does every Q4.

What overflow warehousing is

It is short-term storage for the inventory that does not fit where it normally lives. Racked positions for clean, standard pallets. Floor space for odd-dimensional freight, crates and project cargo. Storage is booked by the month, priced by the pallet or the square foot, with in and out handling on top. When the season ends, the space goes back and so does the bill.

How it works at KDM

• Tell dispatch what is coming and roughly when: containers off the port or rail (our own drayage fleet brings them in), inbound trailers or LTL
• Freight is received, counted against paperwork and logged, then racked or floor-staged in the 200,000 sq ft facility minutes from the 401, 403 and 407
• Containers get destuffed and returned quickly, which keeps you off the demurrage and detention meter while the season peaks
• Orders release on KDM trucks: 53′ trailers, flatbeds, or power-tailgate straight trucks for receivers with no dock

The warehouse and the fleet share one dispatch desk. The person who knows where your pallets sit is the same person booking the truck, so there is no gap between "it is ready" and "it is on the road."

Why book in September

• Space fills. Racked positions in the west GTA go early every year, and October is late to be asking
• Dock appointments and crews get scheduled before your first container lands, so nothing waits on the yard
• Early inbound spreads the receiving work out instead of landing it all in one week
• Once the freight is in Mississauga, delivery lead times to Toronto, Brampton, Vaughan and Hamilton drop to a day

Overflow, cross-dock or full warehousing?

Freight that only needs to change trucks wants a cross-dock, not storage. Inventory that needs racking, picking and stock management year round wants full warehousing. Overflow sits in the middle: real storage, real inventory control, for a defined stretch of time. Plenty of customers use all three in the same quarter, from the same building.