Retail giant Walmart is offering a new service: container shipping. While it won’t be found on the shelves that stock everything from home goods to clothing to groceries, it follows a trend of other major retailers leveraging their transportation and logistics expertise and outsourcing freight rates to partners.
“About two weeks ago, we released a number of important enhancements to the Walmart Cross Border (WCB) B2B ocean freight solution,” announced Scott Humanek, Logi-Tech Product & Tech Executive for Walmart, in a post on LinkedIn. “This enables Walmart Marketplace sellers to ship to the U.S. WalmartFulfillmentServices (WFS) network, starting with origins in China.”
Walmart operates more than 10,500 stores and club stores in 19 countries, as well as e-commerce sites where partners can sell goods directly to consumers. Walmart offers fulfillment to its partners, and now they can also use the company’s shipping and logistics operations.
The shipping option, Humanek reports, became discoverable and generally available as part of recent upgrades to the company’s WFS network. Walmart promotes the service online, writing that it offers partners the opportunity to “leverage Walmart’s low-cost rates to expand their assortment and sales potential.”
Walmart quietly registered with the Federal Maritime Commission nearly two years ago and has a subsidiary registered as a non-vessel carrier and freight forwarder. Its online presence explains that the service offers a full-container-load, port-to-door ocean freight service that transports partners’ goods from China to the U.S. and brings the products directly to Walmart’s fulfillment network.
“Our pilot exceeded our expectations in terms of feedback and volume, and we are excited to share with the world that WCB is ready to help all WFS e-commerce sellers grow,” Humanek writes.
Currently, the service is only available to partners who manufacture their goods in China and can deliver filled containers to certain ports. Walmart offers the service from Yantian, Shanghai and Ningbo. Once the container is delivered in China, it is loaded onto container ships at Walmart’s contract rates. When the box reaches the United States, Walmart’s logistics department arranges transportation directly to its fulfillment centers. Walmart cites the added benefit of making items available to customers more quickly.
Other large carriers have also sought to expand and leverage their contracts and expertise. This approach gained popularity during the surge in transport volumes starting in 2020 during the pandemic, when many smaller companies struggled to get space from carriers despite having contracts.
Some major retailers have turned to chartered ships to transport their boxes, including Walmart. confirmed the move to investors in 2021. Others ranged from Amazon to Cosco and HomeDepot, while some like FedEx offered customers additional space.
The German retail giant Lidl went one step further and launched a Niche shipping company The company is called Tailwind. Operations started in July 2022 and the Hamburg-based shipping company originally planned to transport exclusively non-food cargo for Lidl from Asia to Europe. However, Tailwind has expanded its capacity to offer capacity to other customers and reports that in addition to continuing to supply the parent company, it also has a growing number of third-party customers.
