Tractor Supply has opened an 865,000-square-foot distribution center in Nampa, Idaho, the first of its 11 DCs with an automated storage and retrieval system. The building cost more than $200 million. It runs KNAPP’s OSR shuttle system on 125 battery-powered units, tied into conveyors that store, sequence and move product through the building.
Nampa will serve 123 stores in nine states in its first year and is built to serve more than 200. It began receiving inventory in August and starts shipping to stores in October.
Any retailer with a manual DC network and a new building planned is making the call Tractor Supply just made. Its first automation went into the new building, not into one of the 10 already shipping to stores.
The other 10 DCs range from 592,000 square feet in Waverly, Nebraska, to 1.15 million in Maumelle, Arkansas, which opened in 2024. They run on warehouse and labor management software, per the annual report. Those buildings handled about 81% of the merchandise Tractor Supply stores received last year, with the rest shipped straight from vendors. Third-party import, mixing and bulk centers add capacity. Running the company’s own DCs cost $502.8 million last year including depreciation, up from $450.6 million two years earlier.
Nampa is the network’s first DC in the Pacific Northwest. It “will drastically reduce the distance between the distribution center and our stores in the Pacific Northwest,” Colin Yankee, then chief supply chain officer, said at the groundbreaking last year. Tractor Supply planned about 100 new stores this year. “A lot of our growth will continue to be in the West as we’re opening a new DC out there,” Chief Stores Officer John Ordus told analysts last fall. The stores in that growth also serve as hubs for the company’s own final-mile delivery fleet.
Start-up costs will add about 20 basis points to SG&A in both the third and fourth quarters, CFO Kurt Barton said on the second-quarter call. Tractor Supply books DC running costs in SG&A and freight to stores in cost of goods. Barton expects supply chain efficiency to lift fourth-quarter gross margin by about 20 basis points.
