Jason A. Smith | The Valdosta Daily TimesAdministrator for Appliances Dan Brown sits at his desk at the Lowe's Distribution Center.

VALDOSTA — Lowe’s has distribution centers that receive products from vendors that are then distributed to the company’s store fronts. 

The Lowe’s Distribution Center is no different in functionality.

Vendors send product to the DC where the product is received by the receiving department, said General Manager Mike Jerome. Once the product has been properly put into the center’s system and the vendors are paid, the products are sent to the DC and are either stocked or cross-stocked. 

Cross-stocked products are received by the DC and are placed into the inventory system, but are never actually stored in the warehouse. The DC acts as a flow-through for the product and is taken from the receiving department and sent to the shipping department to be sent to store fronts. 

Stocked items are either sent to shipping if they are part of the requisition list sent out by the store fronts or are stocked in the warehouse to later be shipped to a store front. Keeping items in stock allows for the DC to distribute certain items more quickly when a store front needs them. 

If a stocked product is on the store front requisition list, warehouse team members will retrieve the product and move it into the shipping department. 

The shipping department loads trucks with products from various vendors that are then shipped from Valdosta to one of the 135 store fronts in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Texas served by the DC. 

Though the actual function of the DC is fairly standard, the Lowe’s DC in Valdosta has been winning safety awards for the last five years, Jerome said. 

“The most important thing we do here is safety,” he said. “If you don’t feel safe you aren’t going to do your job well.”

Along with excelling in safety standards, the DC uses Lowe’s purpose of “Helping customers love where they live” and taking the idea and applying it to the workforce: “Helping employees love where they work.”

Helping employees love where they work is fostered in the DC’s the ideology: Trust, care and commit. 

“We want employees to feel valued,” Jerome said. “Every employee here has a critical role here in the DC’s success.”

Along with making employees feel valued, Lowe’s has several programs in place to help keep employees safe at work and outside of work, he said. 

“Beyond loving their job, we want employees to have a great life,” Jerome said. 

The DC has an on-site health clinic for team members. The clinic is for team members who feel sick and offers small prescriptions, free flu-shots, preventive care and health screenings, he said. Lowe’s also offers a smoking-cessation program. 

The DC celebrates family and families with students who are succeeding in school with its Making the Grade luncheon.

“Making the grade is to honor any employee who is a parent or a guardian of a student who is on honor role,” Jerome said.

The event includes a big luncheon, school supplies for the students and other small gifts. 

Approximately 1,400 people participated last year, said Planning Manager Pam Perry.

“It’s practically a carnival,” Jerome said.

Although the distribution center does not have customers who shop and buy products, it still has customers. 

“A box is not just a box,” Perry said. “It is a Father’s Day gift, someone’s new appliance or someone’s new floor.”

The facility has 1.4 million square feet under the roof of two buildings, Jerome said. One building handles large appliances and the other handles everything else. The facility currently has about 850 employees, but during busy seasons, it can have more than 950 employees. 

The facility ships 25,000 trucks and has $1.5 billion worth of goods each year, he said.

The DC has seven miles of conveyor belts, 250 forklifts, has a parking capacity for 1,184 53-foot trailers on site, the property is 88 acres and has 70,000 stock-keeping units, Perry said. 

The DC will observe 20 years of operation in the fall. 

Jason Smith is a reporter at The Valdosta Daily Times. He can be contacted at 229-244-3400 ext.1256.