Sam's Club, audited.
10 of ~45 facilities (US scope)1,083 dock doors2,530 trailer spots1 rail-served
We core-sampled 10 of ~45 DCs, The 10 audited DCs span owned cross-docks and dedicated 3PL sites across the South and Midwest, representative of the 45-facility US distribution and fulfillment network feeding ~600 clubs.
Network size: Walmart Inc. Form 10-K (FY ended Jan 31, 2025): Sam's Club U.S. operates 31 dedicated distribution facilities plus 14 dedicated eCommerce fulfillment centers. https://stock.walmart.com/sec-filings/all-sec-filings/content/0000104169-25-000021/wmt-20250131.htm (2025-01-31)
Public audit. Not affiliated with Sam's Club. Data from satellite imagery + public records.
We audited Sam's Club’s yards from satellite.
Click any site for its gate, docks, and drop yards. No badge, no NDA, just what a driver sees.
Sam's Club’s stack is connected. The yards never were.
Your TMS runs the road. Your WMS runs the building. The yards are the tier between them, and they were never on the network.
Every truck gets re-keyed, re-queued, and re-found at each step. The lost time lives between the steps, which is why no single tool ever fixed it. The audit below is that gap, measured on your real yards.
A real audited site, played gate→dock→exit on the true yard geometry. Switch sites with the picker.
Sam's Club Distribution Center Searcy AR
No guard. Driver finds the call box, hits the buzzer, waits for someone inside to respond.
Movement durations are honest floors set by yard geometry; the uplift lands on the wait fields (queue + dispatch + secondary checkpoints). “Today” timings reflect the radios-and-clipboards world; “With YardFlow” reflects the protocol acting end-to-end. We may be wrong about parts of this, your actual numbers will tell us where.
What the handoffs cost across your network, and what removing them is worth
Read from satellite + Street View across all 10 facilities. At a comparable network, Primo Brands cut drop-and-hook turns from ~48 to ~24 min. Set your real volumes and margins in the calculator to put a number on it.
What surprised us reading Sam's Club’s network
Three patterns held across the sites we sampled. None of them show up on a facility list. All of them change how the yard runs.
- 01
Eight of the 10 Sam's Club DCs gate the yard and five staff a booth, but Hattiesburg and Edwardsville sit wide open to the road with no checkpoint.
- 02
Several Sam's Club DCs are run by third parties: Saddle Creek in Lakeland, Hattiesburg, and Villa Rica, and a Prologis lease in Lithia Springs.
- 03
Only Searcy touches rail, with an intermodal container in the yard. The other nine DCs move everything in and out by truck.
Turn what you saw into a number for finance
This audit is the evidence. The model is the math. Open the calculator seeded with Sam's Club’s audited yards, set your real volumes and margins, and it sizes the opportunity to the dollar.
This deep-dive is the evidence behind the /for/sams-club memo.
Are these your yards?
Tell us where we got it wrong, or see what 15 minutes of orchestration looks like on your worst site.
We are not asking for a pilot. We are asking for a conversation.
A 30-minute call, direct with Casey. We show you what we found across your yards, you tell us straight where it fits and where it does not. If the call goes well, we talk pilot. If not, you keep the analysis.
None of these times work? Email me at casey@freightroll.com or call or text me at 410-236-7434, and we’ll find one.
Casey Larkin, YardFlow. Jake, our founder, joins when it helps.