How many warehouses are there in the US? Nobody knows

Warehousing is a vital part of the global supply chain. Warehousing plays a key role in the success of businesses across a variety of sectors. It would be good to know how many warehouses there are and how quickly those numbers are growing.

Because of e-commerce, it is believed that the number of warehouses in the U.S. is growing rapidly and that there are more but smaller ones. However, without good underlying data, no one can say whether this is true.

Here are some different sources and their very different numbers:

The first question is why does the Department of Energy have these kinds of statistics. Why not the Department of Commerce? The Department of Commerce lists warehouse companies, but of course most warehouses are not owned by third-party logistics companies or publicly owned warehouse companies. Retailers, manufacturers, and distributors own more warehouses than 3PLs.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration, part of DOE, conducts periodic surveys to understand total energy use and usage across different building types. Their most recent survey was in 2018. The previous survey was in 2012, and the compound annual growth rate of storage during that time was 4.0%.

Then there’s JLL. JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated) is a global commercial real estate and investment management firm that helps clients acquire, develop, occupy, manage and invest in a variety of commercial real estate assets, including warehouses. To engage in this activity, they conduct extensive research on commercial markets. According to JLL, the CAGR from 2010 to 2020 was 1.3%.

Then there is Statista. Statista is a German online platform that specializes in data collection and visualization. The CAGR numbers for Statista cover the years 2010-2021. I will discount Statista’s data because they do not provide an explanation of how they arrived at their numbers.

If you look at the DOE numbers a little more closely, you’ll see that they include public warehouses. Since I work in logistics, those warehouses are out of scope. If you eliminate them, you’re left with about 725,000 warehouses. Other DOE categories include non-refrigerated warehouses, distribution centers, and refrigerated warehouses. Distribution centers and refrigerated warehouses make up 17% of the total warehouse count, for a total of about 170,000 warehouses. After those eliminations, the JLL and DOE numbers start to converge—the difference is only about 20,000 warehouses. Presumably, what they call “non-refrigerated warehouses” is a whole bunch of small warehouses. Still, a small warehouse is still a warehouse. It doesn’t make sense to eliminate them. So perhaps the best number for logistics warehouses is 725,000 DOE. But that’s old data. In addition, the DOE data does not allow for a look at warehouse growth by warehouse category, which makes the CAGR numbers suspect. It also makes their total square feet and average square feet questionable.

Of course, if you were trying to calculate the total addressable market for a technology like warehouse management systems or warehouse robots, you wouldn’t just want the number of buildings that are classified as warehouses. You’d want the total number of warehouses. So, for example, if the back of a store is picking and packing e-commerce orders, that back of house is a warehouse. If a factory and a small warehouse are part of the same building, that manufacturing warehouse should also be counted in the total number of warehouses. In short, we have no idea how many warehouses there are in the U.S. And the global numbers are even worse. Which is a real shame.