Kansas Profile – Now That’s Rural: Carl Wasinger, Smart Warehousing
At a glance: Kansas farm boy Carl Wasinger set out to develop a data-based, online inventory management system through a series of warehouses. Today his company, Smart Warehousing, manages more than 11 million square feet of space and more than a thousand employees across the nation.
More information: Ron Wilson, rwilson@ksu.edu, 785-532-7690
Photos: Ron Wilson | Carl Wasinger
Website: Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development
June 18, 2025
By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University
How many deliveries were made across America today?
I have no idea, but the thought of so many products going so many places makes my head swim. Today we’ll meet a company that plays a fundamental role in helping companies smartly manage their inventory and fulfill their deliveries.
Carl Wasinger is founder and CEO of Smart Warehousing in Overland Park. He grew up on a farm near Hill City.
At right: Carl Wasinger | Download this photo
Wasinger went to Kansas State University and took a summer internship with an Arizona company where he worked in shipping and receiving. It appealed to him so much that he chose to focus on it and graduated from K-State with a business degree.
“Growing up on a farm, you have to figure out how to make logistics work,” Wasinger said.
He married a girl from Overland Park and was working in the logistics industry in Kansas City. As the internet became active in the late 1990s, he thought about how to apply such technology to inventory management.
“At the time, companies were trying to track their product inventory with fax machines and phone calls,” Wasinger said. “I wondered if I could build an inventory system that would work for the customer like online banking.”
He started his own business in September 2001 – and a few days later, 9/11 hit.
“Everything I was thinking about had to be put on hold, but that gave me time to do more planning,” Wasinger said.
The company was named Smart Warehousing, combining technology with storage systems. Wasinger developed a sophisticated data platform called SWIMS, which stands for Smart Warehousing Information Management System. SWIMS helps companies track needed data for customer fulfillment and product replenishment needs.
The company began with one computer under Wasinger’s desk and now moves massive amounts of customer data through the cloud.
“We started in one itty bitty warehouse in Kansas City and expanded into Johnson County,” Wasinger said. “We moved into the California market and then the east coast, and have filled in from there.”
To date, Smart Warehousing has assisted nearly 5,000 customers with their warehousing and supply chain management needs.
“We don’t own anything that’s in our warehouses and we don’t sell anything that’s in our warehouses,” Wasinger said. “We just make sure it gets to wherever it’s supposed to go.”
Smart Warehousing has facilities in Atchison and Edgerton in Kansas, plus other locations that literally span the country, from Seattle to Orlando. “We have more than 11 million square feet of space we manage and more than a thousand employees,” Wasinger said.
The SWIMS platform has been fundamental to the company’s success, enabling customers to manage product flow and access online inventory data.
“In 2007, it became a verb in the logistics industry,” Wasinger said. “When one of our customers said, ‘I will SWIM that over to you,’ that was a special moment.”
It was like someone saying “I will Google that.”
What has enabled the company to grow so effectively? “Our mission is to create a better way for our customers,” Wasinger said. “Each of us has two ears and only one mouth, so that tells us we need to listen to our customers’ needs.”
“I think the key things are the three Ds: Data, Doers, and Dock doors,” Wasinger said. “You need to have smart data systems that allow efficient work flow, doers who are people who care -- like those in our company -- and dock doors that work well and showcase our values.”
“We began with that western Kansas work ethic and that’s still in our DNA,” he said.
He learned this naturally, growing up near the rural community of Hill City, population 1,403 people. Now, that’s rural.
For more information, see www.smartwarehousing.com.
There are so many deliveries made nationwide daily that my head swims – and SWIMS is the name of the system that Smart Warehousing uses to help customers fulfill those deliveries.
We commend Carl Wasinger and all the people of Smart Warehousing for making a difference with innovative logistics technology. They are working hard and also working smart.
Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at www.huckboydinstitute.org/kansas-profiles. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit www.huckboydinstitute.org.
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