You might think it’s a new warehouse in Lancaster, Pa., but the 200,000-square-foot building is actually the new hub facility for Messick’s farm equipment dealership. The latest in warehousing and smart logistics in this high-tech world of e-commerce allows the 1952-established business to tackle more than it could in its previous locale.

"We've taken and adopted a lot of what you would see in an e-commerce warehouse somewhere to us," says Neil Messick, one of several third-generation Messicks involved in the business, which started in 1952. He is in charge of information technology and marketing.

“Our business continues to grow year after year,” Messick told American Agriculturist. “Despite a declining number of farms locally, we just seem to be able to reach out further and further, so we’ve increased business across the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.”

Messick's is one of the region’s largest New Holland and Kubota dealers, but it also runs products from numerous shortline equipment companies. The showroom is big enough to house numerous tractors, round balers and other implements, and still look spacious.

Yet the real changes are behind the scenes.

“Everybody is used to ordering from Amazon, getting it quick,” Messick says. “So we’ve adopted smart logistics, taking less people to get things done more quickly.”

The warehouse has four times the pallet rack space as before. The aisles are narrower — 6 feet wide — and special forklifts go in to collect merchandise. “You don't have a 20-foot aisle, and this enables the fitting of a lot more inventory in the space. This is a supply chain best practice,” Messick says.

“With modern logistics, you build high to incorporate the technologies you have inside,” he adds. “Internally, we can do three floors of parts, and we can do pallet racking that goes clear to the ceiling, 30 feet high.”

He talked more in a Q&A with American Agriculturalist, which you can read here.

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Today’s Recap: Neil Messick, Messick, Messick’s, Elizabethtown, Pa.