A nagging problem facing distribution is how to know in advance of receiving a stock shipment, the exact volume the new material will displace on the warehouse shelf, and the total weight of the shipment. Without this information, distributors must find the best available location to store the stock upon receipt and hope that it’s in a spot easily accessible for efficient picking during order fulfillment. They also may be spending extra time to ensure they ordered in a sufficient quantity to avoid unnecessary shipping costs.

Not having sufficient packaging and weight data also impacts distributors when trying to plan for effective loading of their delivery trucks or pre-determining shipping costs when they use a 3rd party carrier. But with the new Trade Service-provided data, distributors will be able to streamline movement of materials to a job site as well as automatically calculate, confirm, and charge shipping costs when sending by UPS or FED-EX.

Trade Service has begun to solve these critical issues with the addition of several new package volume and weight fields to its eDataFlex Pricing Service, such as gross weight, gross volume, package type and quantity, package width, length, and height, and their respective units of measure. The company is capturing these important pieces of information from the manufacturer data it regularly mines from suppliers’ price lists and catalogs.

“We’re very pleased to be able to offer this new logistical data to our customers,” said Tod Moore, Vice President of Sales & Marketing. “It’s been in demand since distributors began trying to automate their logistical operations several years ago. Now, having the information in their business system will enable them to pre-plan stock receipts, making the best available use of their limited warehouse space. And, having ready access to gross package weight will help them buy smarter, easily meeting their suppliers’ minimum freight requirements,” Moore adds.

The company plans to begin populating their database with these new data elements over the next few months and will be working closely with the industry’s business system providers to ensure the new information is effectively integrated into their applications.

About Trade Service
Trade Service Corporation is the leading provider of standardized product and price information to the electrical, plumbing/PVF, HVACR, industrial MRO, and office products industries. Since 1931, the company has been the leader in content acquisition, aggregation, management, publishing, and distribution, offering a variety of products, services, and systems to meet the content needs of over 20,000 distributors, contractors, government agencies and “buy side” Fortune 1000 subscribers. The range of solutions provided includes printed directories, electronic catalogs, pricing data for business system updating, and robust attributed content to fuel full-functioning Internet storefronts. For more information, visit www.tradeservice.com.