If you work in industrial packaging in the upper Midwest, November is the strangest month of the year. The first half is a sprint. The second half is a different sprint. The middle is a long Thanksgiving lunch and then it starts again.
The early-November shipper push
From November 1 through about the 14th, our outbound volume to e-commerce 3PLs runs about 2.3× a normal week. This is the leg of the holiday season where retailers are pre-staging fulfillment inventory and packaging for Black Friday and the post-Thanksgiving cyber period. We see big orders from 3PLs we may not have heard from since spring restock.
The Thanksgiving stall
The week of Thanksgiving is roughly half of a normal week. Receiving docks shut down on Wednesday afternoon. Most customers want their last truck to land Tuesday or Wednesday morning. Our own yard is closed Thursday and Friday. The math gets compressed into about three usable days.
The post-Thanksgiving inbound surge
And then from December 1 onward we get hammered with returns and end-of-season cleanout. Customers who ran heavy through November want to get their empty Gaylords off their floor before year-end. Our inbound throughput more than doubles for two weeks. We typically pre-stage extra inspector hours, pre-book a second trailer pull twice a week, and tell our team to expect overtime they did not sign up for.
What this means for buyers
If you are buying from us in November, place your order before November 14 or after December 5. The two-week window in between is when our lead times stretch from one day to three or four. We will tell you that if you ask. We are just telling you here so you do not have to.
What this means for sellers
If you have a stack of empties to sell and you want a pickup before year-end, the cleanest week to talk to us is the second week of December. We have stabilized post-holiday throughput, the inbound surge is past peak, and we can dispatch a pickup faster than at any other point in the quarter.