An Inventory Intelligence and Decisioning Platform
Upstream identifies what an item is and what it is worth from a single scan at the dock door, then triages, routes, and monetizes it. Returns, overstock, damaged and orphaned freight — every unit gets a decision, so reverse logistics and disposition turn into a billable service line. Start with your own numbers.
The 3PL Problem
Every warehouse has a death pile
It is the corner past the dock door where freight goes to stall. Returns, overstock, damaged goods, orphaned SKUs, abandoned freight — all of it waiting on a person to decide what it is and what to do with it.
For a 3PL, that corner is pure cost. Disposition runs as a cost center, not a service line. Manual inspection caps how many units a shift can clear, so gaylords stack up and dwell time climbs. Abandoned freight turns into dead storage that ties up floor space you could be billing. And every day an item sits unprocessed, the working capital trapped inside it earns nothing. The items are not worthless. They are just too hard to process at speed with the tools most floors run today.
One Platform, Three Use-Cases
Upstream covers the whole death pile, not just returns
The same dock-door decision works across every kind of stranded inventory a 3PL touches. That is the breadth your clients are asking you to handle.
Returns & Reverse Logistics
Intake, grade, and route returned goods into the right secondary market, so reverse logistics becomes a recovery line instead of a cost line.
Product ID & Decisioning
Identify any unit from a scan, no barcode required, then make a real per-unit disposition decision at the speed freight actually moves.
Inventory Recovery & Recommerce
Turn overstock, damaged, and orphaned SKUs into recovered value across your channels, the Vendidit buyer network, or both.
New Billable Service Line
Stand recovery up as a service you bill clients for. 3PLs that add returns and recovery services see a 10% to 30% revenue lift.
Bulk liquidation recovers 20% to 30% of an item's value. Smart, item-level disposition recovers 60% to 80% of MSRP. The gap between these two numbers is the recovery line a 3PL is leaving unbilled — and closing it is not about working harder at the inspection table, it is about making a real per-unit decision at the speed your freight actually moves.
How It Works
The decision happens at the dock door
One scan at intake runs the whole framework — Identify, Triage, Route, Monetize. No barcode required.
Identify
A single scan recognizes the item and pulls a match, even when the label is worn, missing, or unreadable.
Triage
Condition and grade are assessed from the same image, the same way on every shift. AI grading runs 2 to 3x manual throughput.
Route
Each unit gets a disposition by value. Resell, refurbish, liquidate, recycle, or return to vendor, across your channels, the Vendidit buyer network, or both.
Monetize
Items move toward their best recovery path the moment they are graded, so gaylords clear, floor space frees, and working capital comes unstuck.
Running on real 3PL and enterprise volume. Excel3PL uses the platform to streamline reverse logistics and increase recovery value, and Amazon Return Centers run massive-scale ecommerce returns on Upstream.
Built to Fit Your Operation
Whether you are a few thousand units a month or a few million
A common worry is that recovery technology is built for the biggest warehouses and leaves a growing 3PL behind. Upstream is built to fit both. The same platform that powers the largest Amazon Return Center also runs inside growing operators like Excel3PL, and integrates with what you already run through deep MCP integration, so there is no rip-and-replace and no vendor lock-in. Upstream is AI platform agnostic, so you are not tied to one model. You can run your own channels, the Vendidit buyer network, or both. Onboarding starts on one lane, not your whole floor.
No Barcode Dependency
Identification works from a scan, so orphaned and unlabeled freight stops being a dead end.
No Added Labor Required
City Recyclers hit a 500% lift with no headcount added.
Start with One Lane
Prove the recovery number on a single freight stream before you scale it across the floor.
Start with Your Own Volume
Put your monthly volume against the recovery gap and see the number for your floor, then read how a recycler turned the same workflow into a 500% lift in 90 days.