Amazon RDCs: what triggers RDC routing and what to do about it

Since Amazon changed its inbound network to include new Regional Distribution Centers (RDCs), our team has been closely tracking what it means for brands. We've spent time with brands, watched how shipments are routing, and sorted through a lot of conflicting advice. This is our update on what we're seeing, what's still unclear, and what we're recommending with peak season weeks away.

A quick recap of what changed

Amazon has run two inbound networks for years: fulfillment centers (where inventory becomes sellable) and a crossdock network that reroutes cartons to the right region faster. RDCs are a third layer. They're part crossdock, part holding center. Instead of a carton passing straight through to a fulfillment center, Amazon can hold it at an RDC and release it when there's demand at the FC level. In practice, that hold can last minutes or much longer.

Our read is that this is about placement and delivery speed (and capacity). A traditional flow-based crossdock gives Amazon one chance to place a carton correctly when it arrives. An RDC gives Amazon room to wait and place it more optimally for faster delivery promises and better conversion. This also helps Amazon with capacity planning during peak times, like now, where certain regions or the entire West Coast become full. Amazon can hold inventory and distribute it as needed and based on available capacity. That's our team's interpretation, not an explanation Amazon has published, but it matches what we're seeing across brands.

What we're seeing right now

Roughly 38% of US seller inventory has gone into RDCs in the last 7 days. That’s a significant amount of sortable volume and RDCs are backing up quickly.

RDC appointments are disappearing fast. INC1 has no appointments available until after Thanksgiving. ICA3 is about 5 days out, IPA1 about 6 days, and IWA6 about 9 days. Every RDC site has next-day floor load availability, but drop trailers are waiting 2 to 9 days to be unloaded.

Beyond the RDC network, the West Coast surge is here, so keep the port delays in mind. Half of the West Coast sites have at least a 7-day delay or no appointment available after this week. Pattern hasn't seen a drop in speed into regional crossdocks thanks to floor loading and redirects.

What we've learned about what triggers RDC routing

The most common assumption we hear is that RDC routing is purely about how much inventory a brand carries. Our experience says it's two separate attributes, and the first gets overlooked.

The first is shipment mix. When a single shipment mixes fast-moving and slow-moving SKUs, the whole shipment can get routed to an RDC. Amazon isn’t sorting SKU by SKU before deciding. It’s looking at the shipment level only, so your best sellers can end up in the same hold as your slowest movers just because they shipped together.

The second is excess supply. If you're carrying far more weeks of supply on a SKU than Amazon's forecast expects, that inventory can also get held, no matter how fast it sells. We think the reasoning is that Amazon would rather hold it and place it later than risk it landing in the wrong region.

You can see the result in Seller Central as reserved or staging inventory. It's technically available for sale, but it comes with a much slower delivery promise, and you're still paying storage on it. If you haven't looked at that status lately, it's worth checking now.

What we recommend

This is complex, and there's a real trade-off: splitting shipments for better placement means giving up some of the density you'd get from consolidating everything into one load. There's no free version of this. Here's where we'd start:

Ship smaller, more often. Shorter, more frequent shipments limit how much can get held at once and keep excess supply from building up on any single SKU.

Separate head, body, and tail SKUs into different shipment plans. Build plans around velocity tier instead of convenience. Your head SKUs are more likely to move through a faster crossdock, and only your slower-moving inventory waits at an RDC.

Carry less at Amazon overall. The leaner your weeks of supply per SKU, the less reason there is to hold anything back. Amazon hasn’t stated this directly, but across our customers we’ve seen eight weeks of supply act as the tipping point for how likely inventory is to go to an RDC. If a large share of your inventory is routing to RDCs, that’s often a sign your baseline stock is higher than it needs to be, at least based on what Amazon knows.

How Pattern handles it

This is the kind of problem Pattern's fulfillment model is built to manage. Instead of sending Amazon months of supply to protect against stockouts, Pattern ships trucks into Amazon daily, keeping inventory levels matched to actual demand instead of overstocking. That means less inventory sitting in reserved or staging status, and less exposure to network changes like this one.

But when inventory needs to move, Pattern ensures that it can move quickly with our warehouse network and standing check-in appointments at Amazon FCs.You also avoid the placement fees that come with sending inventory in yourself.

Balancing shipment density against RDC exposure is where we specialize. If you want a clearer read on your own head, body, and tail mix, or how your shipments are composed, reach out to your Pattern team. It could make all the difference to whether you can deliver on your plan.

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