Handing your inventory to a 3PL is one of those decisions that looks clean on paper and gets complicated the moment the first pallet rolls through their dock door. You've traded fixed overhead for flexibility, sure. What nobody warns you about is how fast you lose the feel for your own stock. The visibility problem isn't usually the 3PL's fault. Most of them have decent WMS platforms. The issue is that their system was built to serve them, not you. You get a portal, maybe a

Signing with a 3PL without asking the right questions first is how a company ends up paying for a relationship that doesn't work and can't easily get out of it. Most contracts run 24 to 36 months. That's a long time to find out the hard way. Start with inventory visibility. Ask them specifically how cycle counts are conducted, who initiates them, how often, and what system they use to record results. If the answer is vague — "we use our WMS" — push harder. What WMS? How doe