Location guide / Dallas-Fort Worth
DFW is the largest distribution market in the southern half of the country and one of the most contested. Whether to fulfill in Coppell or push north to Kansas City depends on where your customers actually live.
TL;DR
The DFW industrial market is one of the most active in North America. Between Coppell, Grand Prairie, Mesquite, and the I-35E corridor north into Denton County, hundreds of millions of square feet are in service, with tens of millions added every year. CBRE's Q4 2025 figures show DFW with about an 8.7 percent vacancy rate after a year of disciplined absorption[1], and roughly 32.4 million square feet leased across the year[1].
Plenty of 3PLs run beautiful operations there. The question this article cares about is whether DFW is the right node for your brand, or whether a Kansas City warehouse 500 miles north would deliver the same customer experience for less money per parcel.
“DFW is a great regional node and a mediocre national one. Kansas City is the opposite. The right answer depends on your zip-code distribution.”
DFW absorbed roughly 32.4 million square feet of leasing in 2025, only slightly behind 2022's record of 34.5 million[1]. Vacancy ended Q4 2025 at about 8.7 percent, down 30 basis points quarter-over-quarter, after peaking near 9.1 percent in Q1[1][2]. CBRE's annual big-box review puts DFW consistently in the top three US markets for net absorption among 200,000-plus square-foot buildings[3].
That activity is concentrated in a few submarkets. Coppell sits inside DFW's northwest corner, minutes from the airport and from I-635. It runs tight: small-bay vacancy is in the low single digits and rents reflect that. Grand Prairie offers larger floorplates with cheaper land and good highway access along I-30. Mesquite, southeast of downtown, is the cheaper alternative for big-box users who do not need to hand-cycle parcels into a courier rotation multiple times a day. South Dallas (around Lancaster) is the cheapest of the named submarkets and growing fast, but truck access is more variable.
DFW industrial submarkets, late-2025 character
| Submarket | Profile | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Coppell | Tight, premium rents, near airport | Small-parcel and air-freight users |
| Grand Prairie | Mid-priced, large floorplates, I-30 access | Big-box ecommerce, retail dist |
| Mesquite | Lower-cost big-box, US-80 corridor | Slow-turn inventory, retail backstock |
| South Dallas / Lancaster | Newer construction, cheapest | Speculative big-box, regional dist |
| Alliance / N. Fort Worth | Intermodal-anchored growth | Manufacturing, intermodal-served brands |
On wages, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA show packers and shippers paid roughly in line with the national mean for major metro areas[8]. Texas labor law is lighter than California's. The labor pool is deep and the right-to-work environment makes hiring cycles faster. None of that is exotic, it is just workable.
DFW Airport handled about 819,000 tons of cargo in 2024[6]. That puts it outside the global top ten for cargo tonnage but inside the top tier of US passenger and combination-carrier hubs. For brands shipping international air freight, DFW is a meaningful gateway: most major transpacific freighter operators serve it, and the airport's cargo facilities sit close to the major fulfillment submarkets in Coppell and Las Colinas.
Whether that matters for a fulfillment decision depends on whether you import by air. Most ecommerce brands do not. They import containers through Long Beach, Houston, Savannah, or New York / New Jersey, and the air-cargo profile of the airport closest to their warehouse is largely irrelevant. The brands that do care about DFW air freight are perishable goods (fresh flowers, time-sensitive food), high-value electronics (phones, semiconductors), and international ecommerce sellers running cross-border replenishment.
Texas Triangle freight density is real. Bureau of Transportation Statistics data shows the I-35 and I-45 corridors among the most heavily trafficked freight routes in the country[10]. If your brand has a meaningful Texas customer base, fulfilling out of DFW gives you a single-day reach that is structurally hard to replicate from any other location.
Kansas City sits about 500 miles north of Dallas. From Kansas City, ground parcel reaches roughly 85 percent of the US population in two business days, anchored by Kansas City's proximity to the contiguous US population centroid[9]. From Dallas, that figure shifts: most of Texas and the Gulf are inside one day, but the upper Midwest, Plains, and Northeast eat an extra zone. For nationally distributed brands, the math usually favors KC.
Ground transit, ballpark zones from a single warehouse
| Destination | From Dallas | From Kansas City |
|---|---|---|
| Dallas, TX | Same day / next day | 1 to 2 days |
| Houston, TX | 1 day | 2 days |
| Oklahoma City, OK | 1 day | 1 day |
| St. Louis, MO | 2 days | 1 day |
| Chicago, IL | 2 to 3 days | 1 day |
| Denver, CO | 2 days | 2 days |
| Los Angeles, CA | 2 to 3 days | 2 days |
| New York, NY | 3 to 4 days | 2 to 3 days |
The transit table above uses typical UPS Ground / FedEx Ground commitments. Specific lanes and SLAs change by carrier and by week. Pull a real zone-skew analysis on your own orders before you decide.
For brands above 8,000 monthly orders with a real southern customer skew, running DFW as a primary node and Kansas City (or somewhere further north) as a secondary becomes worth modeling. DFW handles Texas, the Gulf, and the Southeast. KC handles the Plains, Midwest, and Northeast. With reasonable inventory placement, blended cost per parcel can drop 8 to 15 percent versus single-node fulfillment in either market.
Map your zone histogram
From any candidate warehouse, count what percentage of last-90-day orders fall into each ground zone. If 25-plus percent of orders are 4-zone or higher, a second node is worth modeling.
Pick the second-node geography
If your primary is DFW, the second node should be either Kansas City (better Northeast and Midwest coverage) or the Northeast itself. Atlanta is a frequent third option for southeastern coverage.
Decide on the inventory split
Run blended landed cost by SKU. Fast-movers get split. Slow-movers stay single-node so you do not double your buffer stock for no reason.
Plan replenishment and reverse logistics
Inter-warehouse transfers add cost. Plan returns flow up front. A single national returns address routed to one warehouse usually beats split returns by SKU.
We are a Kansas City 3PL. We do not run a Dallas building and we are not going to pretend we do. Where we fit is single-node fulfillment for nationally distributed brands, or as the inland half of a two-node strategy paired with an LA, NY, or DFW operator. If your customer mix says DFW is your right answer, an honest 3PL there will say the same thing.
DFW has a wide range of 3PL operators, from massive national networks to single-building shops. Quality varies. The questions below cut through the generic pitch.
A good 3PL of any region will answer all five without flinching. A bad one will pivot to amenities, square footage, and case-study slides. The best 3PLs we know in DFW are honest about when their geography is wrong for a brand. The worst pretend that one warehouse is the answer to every question.
Talk to operators
Send 90 days of order data. We will pull blended cost per parcel under both scenarios and tell you which one is cheaper for your customer mix. If DFW is the right answer, we will say so.
Sources
All figures cited are from publicly available reports. Statistics evolve. Verify the linked source before making a commercial decision.