Walmart 3PL Success: Why Most 3PLs Don’t Support Walmart Properly (And How to Vet Them)

If you sell on Walmart Marketplace, your 3PL can make or break your growth. Selling on Walmart Marketplace gives you the opportunity to reach millions of customers, expanding your potential audience significantly. The platform is surging, the buyers are trained on fast delivery, and Walmart’s physical stores quietly turbocharge the last mile. Most third-party logistics providers still operate with an “Amazon-only” mindset. That’s why so many Walmart orders get stuck, misrated, or delayed.

Here’s the playbook I use to evaluate a Walmart 3PL, so you get the upside of Walmart Fulfillment Services, cost savings on shipping, and a better customer experience without surprise hidden fees.

Walmart Marketplace Is A Different Animal

Walmart’s Marketplace isn’t a niche anymore. Seller count and volume have accelerated through 2025, with Marketplace Pulse tracking a 30 percent increase in sellers in the first five months alone and a rapid influx of international sellers. Translation, more competition, and a higher bar for fast delivery and customer expectations.

And Walmart keeps leaning into its superpower, stores. The company extended delivery coverage to 12 million more households in 2025 using geospatial routing, letting multiple Walmart stores fulfill a single order. That store network, rebranded as Accelerated Pickup and Delivery (APD), turns physical stores into fulfillment centers for real-time speed. Walmart fulfillment centers and warehouses are strategically located to enable fast delivery and efficient inventory management. These Walmart fulfillment centers and warehouses play a key role in storing products and supporting the fulfillment center network. Effective warehousing and storing inventory are essential for meeting Walmart’s delivery expectations and ensuring accurate, timely order fulfillment.

If your 3PL can’t plug into that ecosystem, or at least align to its service levels, your Walmart orders will lag.

Why Most 3PLs Miss The Mark On Walmart

1. They copy-paste Amazon SOPs. Routing rules, order management systems, and fulfillment process logic often assume Amazon’s cutoffs and zones. Walmart’s promise logic is different, and Walmart fulfillment windows require different carriers, shipping costs math, and cubic foot handling. If your 3PL doesn’t tune templates for Walmart, you eat hidden costs and miss same-day shipping promises. Understanding Walmart’s requirements is essential for 3PL success, as optimizing your supply chain and ensuring compliance are key to smooth operations. When evaluating a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, consider key factors like lead times, return processes, and pricing to ensure efficient order management and customer satisfaction. Choosing the right fulfillment partner can be a game-changer for Walmart sellers, enabling you to deliver products reliably and on time, and taking advantage of advanced 3PL services and technology can further optimize your operations.

2. They don’t model store-adjacent speed. Walmart’s network reduces zones for last-mile lanes. Your 3PL should steer Walmart Marketplace sellers toward regional carriers or local injection that mirrors APD pace, not default to national major carriers every time. Recent data shows Walmart customers leaned heavily into same-day during summer deal weeks, because stores are everywhere. When it comes to delivering orders quickly, fulfillment speed is critical; your 3PL must be capable of delivering orders quickly to meet customer expectations and ensure they are delivered accurately.

3. They skip WFS knowledge. Even if you don’t use Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS), your 3PL should know the program’s fulfillment fees, storage rules, hazmat items policies, and routing guide, because those benchmarks anchor buyer expectations, and they’re often cheaper than you think. As of April–July 2025, Walmart publicized that WFS averages about 15 percent less than “the competition” with clear storage/optional fee tables and peak windows. Testing shipments with your 3PL before full rollout is important for quality and compliance, and helps ensure smooth scaling of your operations.

4. They don’t support Walmart-specific data flows. You need real-time tracking in Seller Center, clean inbound receiving for fulfillment centers, and order processing events that match Walmart’s performance scorecards. A 3PL that can’t expose these events reliably will ding your customer satisfaction and rank. It is also important to promptly mark orders as shipped once they are dispatched, maintaining transparency and trust with your customers.

5. They hide fees. Watch for “Walmart handling” surcharges, unexpected packaging materials fees, and shipping weight upcharges for large cube items. If you can’t audit fulfillment fees per order, you can’t scale. For large or bulk items, having freight options is essential to ensure efficient and cost-effective shipping.

The 12-Point Walmart 3pl Vetting Checklist

1. Native Walmart integration, not a connector-of-a-connector. Test order create, cancel, ship confirm, returns, and real-time tracking.

2. Walmart promises parity. Can they meet WFS-like SLAs on 1 – 2 days to core zip clusters, and do they simulate Walmart’s promise windows before you publish offers?

3. Regional carrier bench. Ask for their on-time performance across Zones 5 – 8 for your top five lanes. If they only quote national carriers, expect higher shipping costs.

4. Store-adjacent injection. Do they support scheduled late pickups or local injection to mirror APD speed near key Walmart stores?

5. Dim and cube handling. Walmart’s heavy and oversize rules differ; ensure cartonization and cubic foot billing are transparent.

6. Peak season plan. Can they surge headcount and dock space for peak season without “capacity caps”? Get last Q4’s throughput.

7. Hazmat and temperature control. If you sell aerosols or meltables, confirm temperature control zones and hazmat credentialing.

8. Returns and reverse logistics. How fast can they receive, grade, and restock?

9. Value-added services. Kitting, relabels, packaging materials swaps, and order management exceptions.

10. Inventory management maturity. Cycle counting, shrink reporting, and slotting tuned for your top SKUs.

11. Transparent pricing. Line-item fulfillment services by pick, pack, dunnage, storage; no “Walmart” surcharge.

12. Case studies on Walmart. Ask for references from marketplace sellers with your weight and cube profile.

When To Mix WFS And A 3PL

WFS is compelling, especially for fast movers that fit the fee table. You still need a third-party logistics partner for multichannel work, oversized items, or SKUs that perform better outside WFS. WFS publishes current pricing, optional services, and routing guides. Use those to set target service levels for your 3PL.

A hybrid model works: let WFS carry your highest-velocity Walmart SKUs, and use a vetted Walmart 3PL for the long tail and multi-channel orders (Shopify, DTC, marketplaces). Walmart has also been investing in seller services and embedded finance to speed payouts, another reason volume is migrating. Your 3PL should be ready to ride that wave, not fight it.

Practical Takeaways

• Treat Walmart like Walmart, not Amazon. Different promise logic, different network, different fulfillment solutions.
• Build a carrier mix that prefers short zones and regional speed.
• Benchmark against WFS fees and SLAs, even if you don’t use them.
• Demand transparency on hidden costs and fulfillment operations.
• Use Walmart’s store network to your advantage; shorter delivery equals happier customers, higher sales, better rank.

Cahoot supports Walmart out of the box: multi-node routing, regional carriers, WFS-aware promise modeling, and transparent order fulfillment costs you can audit down to the SKU.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes a Walmart 3PL different from an Amazon-only 3PL?

Walmart’s promise logic, store-adjacent fulfillment, and WFS benchmarks require different routing, carrier selection, and service windows. A Walmart-ready 3PL maps to APD coverage and WFS-like SLAs rather than cloning Amazon rules. 

Should I use Walmart Fulfillment Services or a 3PL?

Use WFS for fast movers that fit the fee table. Pair a 3PL for oversized items, bundles, and multi-channel work. Many brands run both to balance cost savings, fast delivery, and control. 

How fast is Walmart really growing in 2025?

Marketplace seller growth has accelerated through 2025, and Walmart reported strong ecommerce momentum into FY25. That means more competition and higher expectations on speed and price.

What hidden fees should I watch for in Walmart fulfillment?

Look for cartonization upcharges, “Walmart handling” adders, hazmat surcharges, peak storage, and mis-billed shipping weight on large cube items. Compare against WFS’s public rate card to catch anomalies. 

How does Cahoot help Walmart Marketplace sellers?

We tune routing to Walmart’s speed map, leverage regional carriers to shorten zones, expose granular cost lines, and support hybrid WFS + 3PL strategies so you can fulfill orders faster, at lower total cost.

• Category: Uncategorized
• Tag: 3PL, Cahoot, Order Fulfillment