Warehouse Space

Introduction
Warehouse space has been a hot-button issue in the logistics and supply chain fields since everything was thrown into flux via the COVID pandemic.  Logistics professionals everywhere have lamented the struggle of finding appropriate warehouse space to store the various products that they handle.  Naturally, this has given the holders of these spaces a lot of power in what they can do, including bothersome tactics such as forcing their drayage services on people (potential blog post on this at a later date) among other things. 

Storage Issues
Storage is one of the largest factors in the supply chain, especially on the 3PL side of the equation.  Sometimes products cannot be delivered to their destination until a specific time so they must be stored until they can.  While this sounds like a simple process, the act of finding somewhere that can hold the materials is difficult.  Although this is not as much of an issue as it was during the height of the pandemic, it is still a definite and frequent challenge for members of the industry.   

Conclusion
An obvious solution to this, from the perspective of owners of storage space, would be to simply build more warehouses.  Easy, right?  In theory, yes.  In practice, it becomes a bit more complicated.  As hundreds of millions of square feet of warehouse space was created, unforeseen problems such as environmental activists, and opposition from local governments arose.  Most of these battles for space is in California, with conflicts with the interests of local board members located inland.  Similar conflicts are also happening on the east coast, mainly in New Jersey.  Hopefully 2024 brings some balance to the ever-waging battle for warehouse space. 

-Jack