The Family Dollar Services’s distribution center in Maquoketa hums with activity — cartons trundle along expansive conveyor belts, forklifts heft their loads and workers make certain everything’s headed where it’s supposed to go.

Iowa is home to more than two dozen large distribution centers similar to Family Dollar’s that supply convenience and discount stores, supermarkets, plumbing contractors, landscaping and turf maintenance equipment dealers, and other businesses with products from thousands of domestic and international manufacturers.

Computerized inventory control systems, hundreds of miles of conveyor belts and more than 8,000 people are key to making sure the right product is delivered on time from Iowa distribution centers.

Jason Fitzpatrick of Maquoketa loads dog food onto a pallet as he fills bulk orders at Family Dollar’s distribution center in Maquoketa. While smaller, conveyable items are packed in boxes and sent into trucks via conveyor belt, larger non-conveyable items, such as dog food, are wrapped in plastic and taken to the loading bay on dollies. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

At the Family Dollar’s Maquoketa center, product is unloaded from suppliers at one set of dock doors and loaded into trucks at another set of dock doors for transport to 750 stores in 11 states as far west as Wyoming.

In between, forklift operators, headset-equipped order fillers, skilled freight handlers and 10 miles of conveyor belts create a seamless process that operates around the clock, seven days a week.

Between 350 and 400 people are employed at the 900,000-square-foot distribution center, which marked its 10th anniversary earlier this year. The Maquoketa facility is one of 10 distribution centers operated by Family Dollar, which recently announced plans for another in St. George, Utah.

Paul Overmann, Family Dollar Stores regional vice president, said the supply chain process begins  with Family Dollar merchandise buyers in Matthews, N.C.

“The buyers select the products they think will sell best in the markets that we serve, develop a pricing strategy and determine what quantities to purchase,” Overmann explained. “That purchase order is downloaded to our warehouse management system, which really drives everything that happens on the floor of our distribution center.”

The Family Dollar distribution center in Maquoketa typically handles about 125,000 cartons per day. The Charlotte, N.C., retailer selected Maquoketa for its geographic proximity to Interstate 80, available work force, utility costs and property tax level.

Overmann, manager of the Maquoketa facility, said seasonal items such as charcoal for summer grilling or Christmas decorations are ordered months in advance and typically arrive at distribution centers closer to the time they arrive on the shelves at Family Dollar stores. The same rack shelving that held bags of charcoal earlier this summer might hold cartons of snow shovels in the fall.

“SAY AGAIN”

When trucks deliver merchandise to the Family Dollar distribution center, employees of Crossroads Services Group of Goodlettsville, Tenn., unload the freight and check it against computer printouts. A Family Dollar employee will attach a bar code “license” to the pallet that provides information regarding what it is, the correct quantity and where it will be stored.

The pallets are moved to a nearby staging area where a forklift operator equipped with a hand scanner and computer screen scans the license bar code and moves the product to the appropriate slot in reserve storage. Another forklift operator will move product from reserve storage to a “replenish” area adjacent to an order filling station.

Repack stockers such as Connie Taylor of Maquoketa scan the bar code labels, open the boxes with box cutters to check the quantity, then place them on slanted conveyors that transport them to specific slots along order filling stations. Wearing wireless headsets, repack order fillers such as Alissa Gerardy of Maquoketa move along conveyor belts filling totes for specific stores based on codes they hear from a computer.

“When we bring on a new repack order filler, we have them record certain words that they will speak back to the computer so it will recognize their voice,” Overmann said. “If the computer does not understand them, it will ask them to ‘say again.’”

Each tote will hold items needed to restock a specific store. The store number is displayed on a bar code sticker, and the totes will take a U-shaped path to pick up various items, from batteries to shampoo bottles, before they move to an area where the merchandise will be loaded into cardboard boxes — again with the appropriate store number included in a bar code sticker.

The boxes move along conveyors belts to an area where they will merge into a single conveyor belt that will transport them to angled conveyors for delivery to the correct dock door for shipping.

“There are sensors along the way that read the bar codes as well as determining the length of each carton,” Overmann said. “We have associates that make sure the boxes move single file with the bar code facing up through an overhead scanner.”

The size of the cartons is important because devices alongside the rapidly moving conveyor belt will automatically shove them at the right moment into an angled belt for transport to the appropriate loading dock. A moving conveyor belt will carry the boxes all the way into a 52-foot trailer where employees of Crossroads Services Group will pack them, typically loading merchandise for 3 or 4 stores in a trailer.

“All the merchandise for the last store on the route will be loaded first, and each package has a bar code plate with the store number on it,” Overmann said.

“We have merchandise like dog food, cat litter and charcoal that we call ‘non-con,’ meaning it cannot or should not be loaded on a conveyor belt. Those items are picked separately, loaded on pallets, wrapped in plastic and taken directly to the appropriate dock door.”

When all the merchandise for a store has been loaded into a trailer, a plastic “wall” is loaded before the boxes are loaded for the next store. Store employees unloading the truck will know they have everything for their store when they reach the plastic wall.

“We have specific times for the trucks to arrive at our stores,” Overmann noted. “Typically we have about three employees at our stores, so they need the truck to arrive before the store opens or after it closes to assure that we’re able to serve our customers.”

Overmann said trailers are loaded in the order that the merchandise will be delivered to the stores. Family Dollar also picks up waste cardboard from the stores and handles disposal at the distribution centers, typically selling it to mills such as International Paper in Cedar Rapids, which converts it into cardboard to create new cartons.

Conveyor lines merge as boxes are directed by computer to the loading bay at Family Dollar’s distribution center in Maquoketa. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Debi Durham, director of the Iowa Economic Development Authority, said the state and local governments offer tax breaks and other incentives to attract and expand distribution and fulfillment centers.

“In addition to not collecting property taxes on machinery and equipment, the state legislature several years ago passed a bill allowing for a rebate on the purchase of rack shelving and conveyors,” Durham said. “If you look at our central location, transportation grid, industry  clusters and the incentives that we offer, we are uniquely suited for warehousing and distribution.

“That’s why it’s one of our targeted industries for expansion.”

 The following companies operate some of the large distribution centers in Iowa:

Casey’s General Store Distribution Center

1 SE Convenience Blvd., Ankeny

Size: 210,000 square feet

Employment: Not available

Territory: 1,699 in 11 states

Family Dollar Services

302 Family Dollar Parkway, Maquoketa

Size: 900,000 square feet

Employment: 350-400

Territory: 75o stores in 11 states

Florist Distributing Inc. *

2403 Bell Ave., Des Moines

Size: 111,000 square feet

Employment: 171

Territory: All Hy-Vee stores, other clients in Iowa and Nebraska

Hy-Vee Chariton Distribution Complex

1801 Osceola Ave., Chariton

Size: 1.5 million square feet

Employment: 1,050

Territory: 235 stores in 8 states

Hy-Vee Cherokee Distribution Center

(dry food products and general merchandise)

1010 Riverview Dr., Cherokee

Size: 620,000 square feet

Employment: 370

Territory: 235 stores in 8 states

Lomar Distributing Inc. *

(specialty foods)

2500 Dixon St., Des Moines

Size: 145,000

Employment: 125

Territory: 235 Hy-Vee stores in 8 states

Menards Distribution Center

9402 East St., Shelby

Size: 735,000 square feet

Employment: Not available

Territory: Menards stores in Iowa and surrounding states

Nordstrom Distribution Center

(distributes to stores)

5050 Chavenelle Road, Dubuque

Size: 480,522 square feet

Employment: 265

Territory: Nordstrom department stores in the Midwest

Nordstrom Direct Contact and Fulfillment Center

(distributes for direct-mail and online orders)

7700 18th St. SW, Cedar Rapids

Size: 590,000 square feet

Employment: 900

Territory: Online, 50 states

Perishable Distributors of Iowa *

(cheese, meat and seafood)

2721 SE Pdi Place, Ankeny

Size: 400,000 square feet

Employment:  530

Territory: 235 Hy-Vee stores in 8 states

Procter & Gamble Distribution Center

602 Fawcett Dr., West Branch

Size: 1.3 million square feet

Employment: 280

Territory: Midwest retailers

Target Distribution Centers

(nonperishable items and food)

2200 Viking Rd., Cedar Falls

Size: 1.83 million square feet

Employment: 750

Territory: 200 stores in 9 states

Walmart Distribution Center

1501 Mapleleaf Dr., Mount Pleasant

Size: 1.2 million square feet

Employment: 600 (full time)

Territory: Not available

Ferguson Enterprises

920 S. Hackett Road, Waterloo

Size: 608,000 square feet

Employment: 175

Territory: Plumbing contractors

in Iowa and Minnesota

Fareway Stores Distribution Center

2600 E. Eighth St., Boone

Size: 257,000 square feet

Employment: Not available

Territory: 100 stores in  Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska

Fareway Refrigerated Distribution Cooler

2300 E. Eighth St., Boone

Size: 267,000 square feet

Employment: Not available

Territory: 100 stores in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska

* wholly owned Hy-Vee Inc. subsidiaries