Walmart reveals more detail on distribution center hiring, startup

Here's a fresh hint at the sheer scale of Walmart's new distribution center outside Mobile: Its general manager says that it'll start taking in shipments in early June, but won't start putting wares on outbound trucks until about two months later.

"We should be completing the building in the month of May," said Barry Westbrooks. "Our plans right now, we'll start receiving some of our merchandise, we'll start that process the first of June. And then we plan to start shipping to other locations by the end of July, first of August."

It's almost as if Walmart is building a dam, and has to let the lake fill in behind it before it can open the spillways.

"We have to build up inventory in the distribution center before we start the shipping process," Westbrooks said. When your warehouse spans 2.5 million square feet, that takes a little while.

The massive project announced in 2016 vaulted back into local headlines this week when the company announced three days of sessions that kick off the hiring process for hundreds of workers. They aren't job fairs, Westbrooks stressed. They're sessions where people can get information about the kind of jobs that will be available, Walmart's corporate culture, pay and benefits, and the hiring process to come.

"The next step after than will be to solidify some dates and locations where we have actual job fairs," he said. "And those will be coming up ... could be late February, early March."

The first wave of hiring will fill about 50 positions by the end of March. By the end of June, Westbrooks said, he expects to have about 600 people hired.

He's been with Walmart for more than 18 years and this is the third facility he's managed. But it's the first he's opened, so it's not exactly routine. "When you're looking at 2.5 million square feet and you're starting from scratch, yeah, it's still daunting," he said.

Walmart holding job info sessions for Mobile distribution center

He fully expects that most employees will never have worked anywhere like it. Even if they've worked at some other company's distribution facility, it likely was far smaller. But that's okay.

"We're in a position where we can train folks to do the jobs we need them to do, for the most part," he said. "We're looking for folks that, hopefully, they're looking for a career. We think that's something we can offer people."

Westbrooks said the company wants "our folks engaged in work." It's open to ideas that originate with its associates, he said, referring to company founder Sam Walton: "That goes all the way back to Mr. Sam."

While the facility isn't yet complete, Westbrooks said, "We've already got rack going up in the first phase of the building." That shelving is a tangible sign of activity to come: It's where goods will be stored prior to shipment out to other, smaller distribution centers.

Most of those goods will arrive via the Port of Mobile, in shipping containers that will be trucked west on I-10 to the distribution center. Westbrooks said the volume of truck traffic will vary a lot over time. For the first few months, it might be just 150 to 200 containers a week.

"By the time we're fully operational, you could see a thousand containers a week," he said.

At the Mobile facility, cases of goods will be unloaded and squirreled away until called for. "We will build pallets to put away and store in our facility, and then orders will come to us and we'll fulfill those orders in various ways to ship out on trailers," said Westbrooks.

Someday, talking about the sheer size of the facility will be old hat - but not just yet. Westbrooks said that if its roof was flat, its area would be more than sufficient for a runway for many light aircraft. Even a Cessna Citation II business jet. (He looked it up, not that he wants any pilots to try it.)

"When you stand at one end of the facility and you look to the other end and you realize it's point-seven miles, that just gives you a little insight to how big this place is," he said.

Let's block ads! (Why?)