Walmart just upped its e-commerce game by launching a massive, automated fulfillment center in Lancaster, approximately 15 miles from Dallas.
The three-story warehouse was two years in the making but opened its doors on Tuesday, just in time to rival fellow retailer Amazon this holiday season. Currently, Amazon holds an approximately 40% market share of U.S. online shopping, whereas Walmart has just 7%.
Walmart’s 1.5-million-square-foot facility at 2500 E. Belt Line Rd. aims to help change this, with its general manager Josh Lamping telling The Dallas Morning News that it can “ship hundreds of thousands of orders a day.”
It is one of five new-generation fulfillment centers Walmart planned to erect across the nation to rival fellow online retailer giant Amazon. Alongside the Lancaster facility, two more are already in operation in Joliet, Illinois, and McCordsville, Indiana. Another will open in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, next year, followed by one in Stockton, California, in 2026.
The robot-assisted operations will enable Walmart to deliver orders to most customers throughout the U.S. within two days of them being placed online.
“We’re going to get them their stuff faster,” explained Lamping, adding that the new-generation fulfillment centers are twice as efficient as the traditional warehouses.
Yet that doesn’t mean human staff won’t be needed. This is good news for job hunters in North Texas since Walmart pays an average of $23 per hour, one of the higher rates in the region. While the aim is to have 1,000 full-time workers on staff at the warehouse by the holidays, approximately half have been recruited so far.
These employees will work in the front of the building, just a short distance from the parking lot and break rooms. The merchandise is housed in the back of the facility until an order is placed. Then, the automated system brings the selected products along with the custom-made shipping box to the front for workers to pack.
“We’ve reduced packaging materials by 60%,” Lamping said, noting that having machines to make the shipping boxes to measure has been a huge gain.
Walmart is also gearing up to inaugurate a 730,000-square-foot automated grocery distribution center next to the Lancaster warehouse by next year. It will cater to its 150 stores in the region from the southwest corner of the site, adjacent to East Pleasant Run and Cornell roads.
As previously covered in The Dallas Express, Kroger, one of the biggest grocery retailers, has also made significant moves to automate and streamline its online orders.
Using a hub-and-spoke system of delivery, the Kroger Customer Fulfillment Center in southern Dallas handles customer orders in the Dallas-Fort Worth region as well as in Oklahoma City, Austin, and San Antonio. The 350,000-square-foot facility can fulfill 18,000 orders a day, and Kroger’s recent partnership with Gatik’s small self-driving trucks further facilitates the speedy delivery of groceries to customers.
