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The WesternTechSystems facility in Lewisville, Texas at twilight

Services · Reverse Logistics

Custody breaks in transit more often than it breaks in a facility

By the time an asset reaches a certified processing floor, the risky part is usually over. The gap is between the desk it left and the dock it arrived at — and that gap is a logistics problem, not a disposition one.

Why this is its own service

A pallet that arrives unannounced has already broken the chain

Chain of custody is a sequence of documented transfers. It does not begin when a provider scans something into a warehouse management system; it begins when the asset leaves your control.

Everything that happens before the receiving dock is where most real custody failures occur — and it is the part most disposition contracts describe in a single sentence.

A shipment with no manifest, a driver with no signature, a box of laptops on a loading bay overnight, an employee who posted their own return. Each of those is an undocumented interval, and an undocumented interval is exactly what you cannot explain later.

Recovery patterns

Four shapes of return, four different answers

Most programs are two or three of these running at once. They should not all be handled the same way.

Many sites, small quantities

Branch networks, clinics, retail locations and regional offices each produce a handful of assets. Individually trivial; collectively the hardest custody problem there is, because no single site's shipment is big enough for anyone to treat carefully.

How we handle it

Per-site manifests reconciled against per-site receipts. A discrepancy at one location stays visible instead of disappearing into a portfolio total.

Individual employees

Hybrid and remote staff holding laptops, monitors, docks and phones, with no shared collection point and frequently no accurate record of who has what.

How we handle it

Prepaid labelled packaging shipped to the individual, with tracking tied to the asset record and non-returns visible as a named open item rather than a rounding error.

One site, all at once

An office closure or consolidation with a lease deadline. Everything leaves in days, usually after the people who knew what the equipment was have already gone.

How we handle it

Scheduled freight against a walked and documented inventory, with comms rooms and storage areas surveyed rather than assumed empty.

Continuous returns

Trade-in programs, warranty exchanges and OEM return flows where units arrive every day and each needs identity validation, evidence and a settlement outcome.

How we handle it

EDI 214 and webhook pre-alerts feeding a receiving queue, so a unit is expected before it lands and reconciled the day it does.

Capabilities

What sits behind the collection

Multi-carrier integration
API-level integration across carriers with rate shopping and validation, so lane and service level are chosen per shipment rather than by default account.
Label generation from your systems
Labels generated against your ERP or asset record, so the shipment is tied to specific asset IDs from the moment it is created.
EDI 214 in-transit visibility
Shipment status flows back as structured data, not as a tracking link somebody has to check manually.
Exception detection and claims
Damage, shortage and delay are detected against the expected manifest and routed into a claims workflow, with service levels tracked.
International and customs handling
IATA-compliant shipping for lithium-battery devices, customs documentation and exporter-of-record handling where a program crosses borders.
Secure receiving on arrival
Inbound assets go into a mesh-enclosed, lockable receiving cage and are reconciled against the declared manifest before joining general stock.

Our facility sits roughly twenty minutes from DFW International Airport, with daily carrier pickup at our own dock and both LTL and FTL freight options. For a consolidating program, that geography is a real line item rather than a talking point.

FAQ

Questions about collection and transport

Do you provide packaging?
Yes — packaging, labels and instructions sized to what is actually being returned, whether that is a single laptop from a home office or palletized equipment from a closing site. Devices arriving in improvised packaging get damaged, and damage on a unit that would otherwise have been graded and resold is money that came straight out of your recovery.
How do you handle devices that never come back?
They are reported as named open items against the origin site or individual, not netted off elsewhere. This is the point of reconciling per origin: a device you never received cannot be certified as sanitized, and a report that quietly balances a missing unit against an unexpected one has hidden exactly the fact you needed.
Can you collect internationally?
We operate across the United States and Canada, with a Canadian operation in London, Ontario, and we handle international shipping including IATA-compliant lithium-battery transport, customs documentation and exporter-of-record requirements. For a cross-border program, raise it during scoping — documentation requirements differ by lane and are much easier to build in than to retrofit.
What about lithium batteries?
Devices with lithium batteries are regulated as dangerous goods in air transport, and non-compliant packaging is a genuine safety issue as well as a compliance one. We ship to IATA requirements and package accordingly. If your own team is currently shipping devices without regard to this, it is worth reviewing independently of anything we do.
How fast can you collect?
Within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, same-day and next-day pickup is available. Nationally it depends on lane and volume. For a deadline-driven event such as a lease expiry, the constraint is almost never carrier capacity — it is how long it takes to establish what is actually in the building, which is why the inventory walk should start before the freight is booked.
Do you consolidate before processing?
Everything consolidates into our Lewisville facility, which is where processing happens. Consolidation is what makes reconciliation possible in the first place: one receiving point, one asset record, one set of gates, rather than partial views from several regional depots that have to be joined afterwards.
Can you integrate with our systems?
Yes. JSON webhooks with HMAC validation, EDI 214 and 810, AS2 transport, and SFTP file exchange, with retries, idempotency and circuit breakers so a failed message does not silently drop an asset. Middleware integration is available through established iPaaS platforms where your stack already uses one.

Tell us where the equipment currently is.

Sites, people, quantities and deadlines. That is enough to plan a collection rather than quote a rate.

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