How Saddle Creek Plans for Peak Season

Why 3PL Peak Is Fundamentally Different (And What That Teaches You)

Before we get into tactics, you need to understand something that fundamentally changes how Saddle Creek approaches peak season.

Most retail brands experience peak as existential drama - 40-60% of annual revenue compressed into six weeks. But Saddle Creek's peak looks different because of their client portfolio structure.

"What's interesting about Saddle Creek is, as a 3PL, you have a really good breadth of companies," Steve explained. "Some of our clientshave a significant peak. It could be 4x, 5x, 6x plus what they normally do. Other clientsdon't have a peak at all."

His example: "We have some clients that sell direct-to-consumer pet food. Well, the dog doesn't eat anymore because it's Christmas time. So while they may run some promotions and they may have a slight peak there, you're not getting into the multiple X peak with those clients."

This client diversity creates a natural leveling effect. Instead of every client hitting maximum capacity simultaneously, Saddle Creek sees rolling peaks. Some businesses peak in summer. Others spike around sporting events. Traditional palletized business often runs steady year-round.

What this means for you

If you're evaluating 3PLs: Ask what percentage of their book is counter-cyclical to your peak. A 3PL with 60% peak clients and 40% steady business can flex labor more effectively than one where 90% spike simultaneously. You're not just buying warehouse space - you're buying access to their labor pooling capability.

If you're managing your own warehouse: Look for ways to diversify demand patterns. Can you take on B2B orders that peak at different times? Every counter-cyclical revenue stream makes your operation more flexible.

Saddle Creek's Year-Round Planning Calendar: When Real Preparation Happens

Saddle Creek's peak planning operates on a four-phase calendar that starts the day after Christmas and runs continuously through the following peak season.

Phase 1: Post-Mortem (Late December - January)

The day after peak ends, while memories are fresh, Saddle Creek runs structured retrospectives documenting:

• What went right (unexpected wins, scalable practices)

• What went wrong (systems, processes, forecasts)

• Which clients missed projections and in which direction

• Did our technology perform as expected?

• Where else could we have leveraged technology?

• Lessons that will change next year's approach

Why this matters: Most operators skip the retrospective or do it superficially. But this is when Saddle Creek captures the high-resolution detail that actually improves next year.

The specific questions they ask in January:

• Which forecast assumptions were wrong and why?

• Where did we have excess capacity and where were we constrained?

• What would we do differently if we could rewind six months?

Phase 2: Discussions with Prospective Clients (First Quarter)

Soon after peak wraps up, Steve says the company often hears from prospective clients who struggled with seasonal logistics and are looking to make a change.

Starting the process early in the new year allows time to identify the optimal solution and transition to a new facility well in advance of the next holiday season. 

This can also be a good time of year to explore new and emerging technologies that could further optimize performance for current clients, particularly for more complex automated solutions that may require a longer lead time. The Saddle Creek team can provide a short list of technology options well suited to a client’s particular business case.

Phase 3: Early Client Conversations (Summer)

Summer is when Saddle Creek asks its clients for initial forecasts, to be honed as peak approaches .

The timing is deliberate: brands need lead time to adjust their supply chain but are close enough to peak to have meaningful data. Too early and projections are noise. Too late and infrastructure changes become impossible.

Phase 4: Continuous Revision (Summer Through Peak)

Here's where Saddle Creek's approach diverges from most operators. They treat summer forecasts as version 1.0 of a living document, not a locked plan.

"We talk with all of our major vendors weekly, on average," Steve explained. The moment we learn something material - a client's mid-year sales are up 100%, a projection gets revised, a new account comes online - they communicate it immediately to vendors and internal teams.

The revision schedule you can copy

Based on Saddle Creek's approach:

January-May: Post-mortem reviews, technology improvements, staff cross-training, transition to new 3PL if needed
June-July: Initial peak forecasts collected from all clients
August-September: Monthly forecast revision meetings
October: Bi-weekly forecast check-ins
November: Weekly reviews with daily monitoring
During peak: Real-time monitoring, immediate escalation for variances +/- 20%

Key principle: Don't wait for scheduled meetings. If you learn something Tuesday that changes capacity needs, tell everyone Tuesday.

How They Use Historical Data to Validate Forecasts Months Early

One of Saddle Creek's advantages is institutional memory. For long-term clients, they don't just accept projections at face value - they validate against years of actual performance data.

"For clients that we've had for many years, we know  typically  when their peak is going to be based on previous year demand," Steve explained. "We know that they expect to be, let's say, up 10%, 15%, 50% or 100% over last year. Our knowledge of broader markets and verticals year over year also helps us to anticipate trends."

But here's the insight that changes forecasting: Saddle Creek validates peak forecasts by watching year-over-year trends in the shoulder seasons.

"If you have a client that is up 100% year over year in June, well, odds are that volume is not going to tail off during peak," Steve noted. "Those are the types of clients that we want to know and we want to understand. Okay, do we expect this to continue? Do we think it's going to grow more?"

Saddle Creek also developed an AI-enabled real-time labor planning tool to improve the accuracy of client forecasts and calculate the labor hours required to fulfill demand. This is particularly helpful for small- to mid-sized clients that might not have their own forecasting engines, Steve says.

How to build your own early warning system

Create a YoY comparison dashboard for May-August tracking:

• Total volume vs. same period last year (weekly)

• Order composition changes (wholesale vs. DTC vs. retail)

• Average order value trends

• Return rate trends (signals product issues that affect peak)

• New vs. repeat customer ratios

Set automatic triggers: If Q2 volume is over 50% above last year, flag for immediate peak forecast review. Don't wait for the client to tell you their forecast might be wrong - the data is already telling you.

For brands evaluating 3PLs: Ask how they use historical data to validate your projections. A sophisticated operator like Saddle Creek should show you trend analysis from pre-peak months and explain how that informs their capacity planning. If they're taking your forecast at face value without questioning it, that's a red flag.

Why Saddle Creek Plans Systems Before Labor

Most warehouse operators think about peak planning as primarily a labor problem. Saddle Creek approaches it more holistically.

Saddle Creek's systems team maps projections against their integration architecture first. Why? Because different order types create radically different system loads, and those loads peak at different times. 

The three order types that stress systems differently

Steve broke down how Saddle Creek thinks about system load: "The load on the system can be very different if you're talking about direct-to-consumer orders, which tend to be small but you have a lot of them, versus a wholesale order, which is the flip side - you don't have that many, but they're very large orders."

Direct-to-consumer:

• Small orders, high volume, heavy API usage

• Peak: Black Friday through December 18-20

• System stress: API rate limits, order processing throughput

Wholesale:

• Large orders, low volume, traditional EDI

• Peak: Mid-October to Early November (positioning inventory for Holiday traffic)

• System stress: Large transaction processing, inventory allocation

Retail:

• Medium orders, medium volume, mixed integration

• Peak: Varies by retailer (Similar to Wholesale but usually overlaps with DTC as stores may need to replenish inventory after the initial Black Friday surge)

• System stress: Between DTC and wholesale

"The timing of each order type is all about positioning your inventory in the right place at the right time to make a sale,” Steve said.."

How Saddle Creek preps their systems

Saddle Creek's technical preparation includes hardening API layers, running load tests, and validating capacity with degraded infrastructure.

That last point is critical. Steve was explicit about their testing philosophy: "We look at the server cluster. The idea is we want to be able to fully handle our expected volume and then some, even if we were to lose a couple servers. Obviously, we hope we don't, but in case we do, we want to be able to handle the volume."

For warehouse operators: Don't just test peak volume on perfect infrastructure. Test it with servers down, database at 80% capacity, network latency, during security patch deployment. Because Murphy's Law doesn't take Black Friday off.

How They Work With Technology Partners in Peak Planning

One insight most operators miss: your WMS and OMS providers are also planning for peak, and Saddle Creek coordinates closely with them.

Saddle Creek uses Infios for their order management system, along with other technology partners for their WMS and infrastructure. Like most cloud-based providers, these partners need detailed projections to provision appropriate infrastructure. 

But it's not just about total volume.

"Systems providers, especially the ones that are cloud, which they're responsible for hosting, will ask us around that same time frame over the summer: What does peak look like for you guys this year? In terms of capacity, that sort of thing," Steve said.

The systems partners need to understand volume composition. "That's down to both inbound and outbound, as well as on the order side. What order types, because the load on the system can be very different if you're talking about a direct consumer order versus a wholesale order versus retail orders or retail replenishment orders."

Saddle Creek's coordination timeline

Saddle Creek maintains constant communication with all key systems partners:

"We talk with all of our major vendors weekly, on average. Some weeks more, some weeks less. But on average, we talk to them weekly."

Summer conversations establish the baseline. But continuous updates are key: "We do quarterly business reviews with all of our key vendors. But we don't necessarily wait. If we get an update from a client or we get an update from our operations team talking about different volumes and things like that that maybe we didn't know, we're not going to wait for the next QBR to do that."

For warehouse operators: If you're running cloud-based systems, establish this same communication cadence with your OMS and WMS providers. They need your peak projections broken down by order type so they can provision appropriate infrastructure. And you need to keep them updated as those projections change.

Ask your systems partners:

• What's your peak preparation process?

• When do you need our peak projections?

• How should we communicate forecast changes?

• What load testing will you do before peak?

• What's your plan if we exceed projections?

The Real Secret: How They Built Labor Flexibility Through Standardization

This was the most important insight about how Saddle Creek actually operates.

Saddle Creek's peak flexibility doesn't come from more warehouse space or massive seasonal labor budgets. It comes from their ability to move existing, experienced staff between client accounts seamlessly.

"One of the things that's really important for us, and that benefits us particularly in the fulfillment side, is the common system approach," Steve explained. "We use the same WMS. The screens are the same, the approach is the same. It allows us to share labor between accounts as needed."

Think about what this means operationally: When Brand A hits their 5x peak and Brand B runs steady, Saddle Creek shifts warehouse staff between accounts without a need for retraining. An experienced operator can be productive on a different client's account within hours, not weeks.

"If we need to flex up or down, we have the ability to do that," Steve said. "The difference is often howwe're flexing. We're not just hiring temp labor from the temp pool – though obviously, there's a component of that – but more often than not, that flexibility is coming from other operations that are not in the middle of such a peak."

But there's a critical precondition Saddle Creek builds months in advance: cross-training.

"The first thing in advance would be cross-training," Steve emphasized. "Because while the systems might be the same, every client is going to have their individual nuances and approach... So doing some of that cross training in advance can help you with that. So if you need to flex a little more than you thought, then you have that ability."

Saddle Creek's cross-training protocol

Q1-Q2: Foundation Building

Saddle Creek rotates staff through different client accounts during low-volume periods. They start with their strongest performers (they learn fastest and train others). They document client-specific nuances in accessible playbooks and create video walkthroughs.

Q3: Validation and Scaling

They run simulations where teams handle accounts they don't normally manage. They measure ramp-up time for cross-trained staff vs. new seasonal hires. They identify and fill gaps in coverage. They cross-train their trainers (so they can onboard seasonal staff faster).

Q4: Refresh and Execute

They update playbooks with any process changes from the year. All staff know which accounts they're back-up for. They test one full shift with rotated assignments before peak starts. They keep cross-training fresh during peak with weekly rotations.

Their goal: Any experienced staff member operates at 80% efficiency on a different client account within 4 hours.

Why Saddle Creek's standardization approach matters

Steve was clear that Saddle Creek prides itself on the fact that “we want to give that individual personalized service to every one of our clients."

But at Saddle Creek, personalization happens within a standard system framework, not through entirely different systems.

For warehouse operators managing multiple product lines or brands: Every additional system you run decreases your labor flexibility exponentially. Every unique WMS, every client-specific workflow, every one-off process reduces your ability to flex staff when you need it most.

The standardization audit:

• How many different WMS platforms are you running?

• How many different order management systems?

• How many unique workflows require specific training?

Each one constrains your flexibility. Start consolidating now, not in October.

How Saddle Creek Plans for Uncertainty

One of Steve's best insights about Saddle Creek's philosophy came when discussing what typically goes wrong during peak:

His reasoning cuts to Saddle Creek's core planning principle: Nobody actually knows what consumers will do.

Consumer behaviour is fundamentally unpredictable. Good news on Wall Street right before Thanksgiving could translate into more spending than anyone predicted. Market conditions shift. Variables change constantly.

And forecast misses go both directions. 

Clients miss projections - multiple clients, every year. Some miss low, others miss high. For some clients, products take off more than they projected, which is great for everyone. For others, demand falls short. 

This year, tariff uncertainty added a wrinkle. Last year, something else. There's always a new variable.

How Saddle Creek builds flexibility

When I asked Steve how Saddle Creek actually builds flexibility into their operations, he pointed to three key practices:

Cross-training: "The first thing in advance would be cross-training," Steve said. (We covered Saddle Creek's detailed cross-training protocol in an earlier section.)

Pre-qualified seasonal labor: "Having a good base of seasonal labor," Steve noted, gives Saddle Creek adjustment capability. But they cultivate this before peak, not during.

Automation: The strategic use of automation and robotics also enables the company to accommodate fluctuations in volume. For example, the company’s fleet of goods-to-person robots may be used across multiple operations throughout the year, but they can be redeployed for a single brand to handle significant seasonal fluctuations.

Four frameworks you can apply

Here are three frameworks you can build based on Saddle Creek’s philosophy of planning for uncertainty:

Framework 1: Buffer capacity based on historical forecast error

Don't plan to exactly forecasted demand. Look at how much your clients or business units have historically missed forecasts (in both directions), then build capacity for the upper bound of that range.

The math: If forecasted demand is 10,000 orders/day and historical misses run plus or minus 30%, plan capacity for 13,000 orders/day. Yes, you'll have excess capacity if they miss low. But peak is not the time to be capacity-constrained.

Framework 2: Build staffing agency relationships before you need them

Following Saddle Creek's approach of cultivating seasonal labor pools early, develop relationships with agencies in Q1-Q2. Pre-qualify candidates by August. Complete background checks in advance. Create simplified onboarding processes.

So when you need to scale up by 30% on short notice, you're executing a pre-built plan, not starting from scratch.

Framework 3: Identify opportunities to leverage advanced technologies

Explore your options for automation and robotics well ahead of peak season. These technologies are more affordable and flexible than ever, allowing you to start small and expand as your volume grows.

Framework 4: Pre-approved decision trees

Build if-then scenarios in advance that specify what to do when reality diverges from forecast. The key is pre-approval - so the person on the warehouse floor knows exactly what they're authorized to do without waiting for approval meetings.

The exact thresholds (15% variance? 25%? 50%?) will depend on your business, your forecast accuracy, and your buffer capacity. The principle is the same: make decisions in advance so you can execute quickly when things change.

How They Measure Peak Success: The Dual Framework

When I asked Steve how Saddle Creek measures peak success, his answer revealed how they think about client relationships.

"Our clients’ success is our success. So one metric is how successful our clients feel peak was," he said. "Sometimes it's hard to put a number on that. Some of that's a feeling. Some of that's how well their business did."

Note the word "feel." Steve acknowledged this is qualitative, but it matters at Saddle Creek in ways metrics can't capture.

Then he added the quantitative layer: "The other way is through our SLAs. We have SLAs with our clients that we've agreed to with individual clients... How successfully did we do there in terms of hitting SLAs? That's probably the biggest way we look at the numbers."

Saddle Creek's measurement framework

Quantitative (tracked daily during peak):

• SLA achievement rate by client

• Order accuracy

• On-time shipment percentage

• Damage rate

• Customer service response time

• Technology uptime

• Returns processing time

Qualitative (gathered in January):

• Client satisfaction surveys (early January while peak is fresh)

• Account manager feedback

• Escalation volume and themes

• "Would have gone better if..." retrospectives

Why Saddle Creek tracks both: You can hit every SLA and still have an unhappy client. Maybe shipments were on-time but arrived during their busiest receiving window. Maybe orders were accurate but packed inefficiently. The qualitative data surfaces issues that don't show up in dashboards.

A few questions Saddle Creek asks in January retrospectives

With clients:

• What went better than expected?

• What would you have wanted us to do differently?

• Where did we create problems that didn't show up in our SLAs?

• What should we change for next year?

• Are there ways to leverage technology to improve performance?

With their team:

• Where did we have close calls that didn't become incidents?

• What processes broke down under load?

• Where did we waste time or effort?

• What would have helped you be more effective?

They document everything. It becomes input for next year's planning cycle.

If You're Evaluating 3PLs: The Questions That Reveal Real Capability

If you're a brand choosing a 3PL for peak capacity, Steve distilled what to look for into two core questions. But how you ask matters - you're trying to get past marketing speak to operational reality like what I learned about at Saddle Creek.

Question 1: How do you actually scale?

Don't ask "Can you handle peak?" Every 3PL will say yes. Ask specific questions:

"Walk me through what happened with your most demanding client last peak."

• What was their volume spike?

• Did they hit forecast or miss? By how much?

• What adjustments did you make?

• What went wrong and how did you recover?

"Show me peak performance data from similar brands."

• Order accuracy during peak vs. non-peak

• Average time from order to shipment during peak

• How metrics trended as volume increased

"What's your contingency plan if I'm 50% over forecast?"

• What's your buffer capacity?

• How quickly can you bring on additional labor?

• What happens if multiple clients miss forecast in the same direction?

“What technology options do you have in your network that would help support our business?”

• Short-term vs. long-term solutions

Question 2: How do you share resources across clients?

This reveals whether they've built flexibility like Saddle Creek or if they're just a warehouse serving multiple clients.

"What percentage of your labor pool is cross-trained across multiple accounts?"

Good answer: "About 60-70% of our staff can operate on at least two client accounts, and we have a rotation program that maintains that cross-training year-round." (This is how Saddle Creek operates.)

Bad answer: "Each client has dedicated staff." (They can't flex labor when you need it.)

"Do you use the same WMS for all e-commerce clients?"

This reveals system standardization. If every client runs a different WMS, they can't efficiently share labor the way Saddle Creek does.

“How do you track labor sharing in a multi-client environment?” 

Good answer: “Using a labor management system (LMS) helps to ensure that labor is billed accurately.”

"Walk me through your forecast revision process."

Look for:

• Weekly communication with systems partners (like how Saddle Creek works with Infios)

• Monthly or bi-weekly revision cycles

• Immediate escalation protocols

• Examples of mid-year adjustments

• AI-enabled projections and labor planning

"How do you handle security updates during peak season?"

This reveals operational maturity. Look for:

• Change freeze for enhancements but continued security patching (Saddle Creek's approach)

• Testing protocols for peak-season changes

• Rollback procedures

• Senior staff availability

"What was your biggest peak surprise last year and how did you handle it?"

Every operator has surprises. You want to understand:

• How quickly they identified the issue

• How they adjusted

• What they learned

• What they changed for this year

The answers reveal whether they have flexible systems like Saddle Creek or execute a rigid plan and hope for the best.

What to Do Starting Today

Peak planning isn't about working harder in Q4. It's about building systems and training staff in Q1-Q3 so Q4 is execution, not scrambling. Here's how to replicate Saddle Creek's approach:

January-February: Post-Mortem and Foundation

Run detailed peak retrospective like Saddle Creek does. Document what went wrong, what went right, what surprised you. Gather client feedback while fresh. Calculate actual forecast variance by client.

Audit current cross-training levels. Map systems and identify standardization opportunities. Review vendor contracts and communication protocols. Build historical forecast error database.Begin cross-training rotations. 

Start systems consolidation planning if running multiple platforms. Implement YoY comparison dashboards. Build if-then decision trees.

Explore opportunities for adding automation or robotics. Be sure to consider potential implications for systems integration.

If you struggled with peak season operations, determine if you’d benefit from working with an experienced provider.

March-May: Building Capability

Continue cross-training. Document processes in playbooks. Establish weekly communication with vendors and systems partners (follow Saddle Creek's cadence). Run initial load tests.

Scale cross-training to more staff. Begin seasonal labor pool development. Optimize database performance. Update monitoring thresholds.

Test cross-training effectiveness. Finalize onboarding processes. Complete system consolidation projects. Begin watching YoY trends for early forecast validation.

June-July: Initial Planning

Collect initial peak forecasts. Share projections with systems partners (OMS and WMS providers like Infios). Map forecasts to integration points and system load. Identify bottlenecks.

Validate forecasts against YoY trends (flag major discrepancies). Begin API hardening and integration testing. Establish revision schedule for Aug-Nov. Run first round of peak load testing.

August-September: Revision and Hardening

Monthly forecast revision meetings. Continue load testing with different order-type mixes. Test for failure scenarios (degraded infrastructure like Saddle Creek does). Refresh cross-training and update playbooks.

Complete final systems hardening. Finish seasonal labor pre-qualification. Run tabletop exercises for common peak scenarios.

October: Final Prep

Bi-weekly forecast reviews. Implement change freeze for enhancements (maintain security patching like Saddle Creek). Final cross-training refresher. Validate all monitoring and alerting.

Pre-position buffer inventory. Confirm seasonal labor availability. Test emergency communication protocols.

November-December: Execution

Weekly forecast reviews. Daily monitoring vs. forecast. Execute if-then scenarios as needed. Continue security patching with adjusted timing. Document surprises in real-time for next year.

The Bottom Line

The fundamental insight from how Saddle Creek operates:

Flexibility doesn't happen during peak. Flexibility is built in the nine months before peak through deliberate system design, cross-training, continuous communication, and planning for uncertainty.

Build for that uncertainty like Saddle Creek does, and peak becomes less about heroic effort and more about executing a plan you've refined for years.

Start with these three things this month:

1. Schedule your January retrospective if you haven't. Capture lessons while fresh. This becomes input for next year's planning cycle.

2. Begin cross-training this week. Start rotating your strongest staff through different areas now. Goal: every staff member 80% proficient in two areas by September.

3. Build your YoY comparison dashboard. You need visibility into shoulder-season trends now so you can validate forecast assumptions this summer. If May-June is running 80% above last year, your peak forecast is probably wrong.

The difference between operators who thrive during peak and operators who survive isn't talent or resources. It's starting in January instead of October.