Introduction
When you’ve lived through a warehouse choke point at peak season, you start to appreciate things you never thought you’d think about — like how quickly you can train junior ops talent, whether your returns triage is built for scale, or if the mail drop near me will hit capacity during a December weather surge. In 2022, we saw a 5.3x spike in returns during BFCM, and our team had to process nearly 2,400 RMAs in a 10-day window.
We weren’t ready. Not even close.
We spent $27 per return on processing for items that later resold for $19. That’s negative unit economics in the wild. Space ran out. Refund emails piled up. So, when I first connected with students from Prairie State College Chicago Heights IL, it wasn’t some polished HR program. It was a “we need smart hands now, and we don’t have six weeks to onboard” moment. And it changed the way I think about ops hiring and local workforce ecosystems.
Let’s talk about that — what Prairie State College brings to the table for e-commerce logistics talent development, how ops breaks under stress, and how the future of reverse logistics increasingly depends on local skilled talent (not just software or 3PL scale).
Prairie State College Chicago Heights IL and the Future of Local Ops Talent
Before building automated returns routing systems and warehouse bypass technology, we relied heavily on junior ops hires. Prairie State College Chicago Heights IL supplied some of our most reliable early talent — students who understood real-world speed, scheduling flexibility, and problem-solving in the face of operational chaos.
They weren’t looking for theory. They were looking to jump into logistics execution — and it showed. We trained three students during our winter surge cycle. By week three, they could:
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Process returns using Loop and Narvar
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Triage inbound items and tag refurbishment eligibility
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Manage local carrier drop-offs between UPS and FedEx
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Operate warehouse inventory in ShipBob’s WMS
Here’s where ops breaks when you don’t have talent like this:
You get paralysis. Refunds take days. Customers escalate. A one-day slip becomes a six-figure revenue drag.
And if your “solution” is “just hire more,” you already lost. Training time is the real bottleneck.
Prairie State’s hands-on programs and flexible schedules made talent onboarding faster.
Not perfect. But very real.
What Operators Learn During a BFCM Return Surge (and Why Local Colleges Matter)
You don’t get ready for returns season by reading blog posts like this — you get ready by bleeding through one. That first big failure taught us two lessons:
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Returns aren't a warehouse task. They're a cash-flow task.
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Local hands matter more than remote dashboards during peak crush cycles.
During our January surge, warehouse labor burned at 1.8x cost per hour, because everyone was working overtime and we couldn’t triage quickly enough. We delayed refunds by an average of 2.6 days, and churn spiked 14% for first-time buyers. That’s real revenue, gone.
This is why training students from Prairie State College Chicago Heights IL hit differently — they got exposure to:
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Real inventory constraints
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Carrier cutoff times
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Physical scan workflows
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Customer promise math
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“Returns vs resale viability” logic
And we learned something too: hiring local talent who wants real-world training solves an ops bottleneck faster than throwing software at the problem.
Now the logistics math that matters:
If a return takes 3–7 days to process centrally but 24–48 hours locally with a trained junior ops worker, that’s cash velocity, not just workflow speed.
This is the future: local return talent + local routing tech instead of one giant warehouse miles away.
(Yes, that’s exactly why we built Closo.)
Walmart Eau Claire and a Real-World Return Ops Lesson
You wouldn’t expect Walmart Eau Claire to matter in a story about Prairie State — but it does, because big-box return infrastructure is where many operators learn their first logistics lessons. In 2023, while benchmarking retail returns, we watched Walmart Eau Claire move 28% of returns to resale bins right at the counter — zero warehouse hops. Cost? Less than $4–$6 per processed return.
Meanwhile, our average return cost that same month?
$26.80.
Walmart wasn't “outsourcing.” They were localizing. And that’s the lesson entrepreneurs miss when they think returns are just a WMS problem.
Local talent. Local routing. Local decisioning.
Prairie State students understood this intuitively — more than some senior operators I’ve hired.
Airshop and Operational Speed
Another unexpected training ground? Airshop.
I met a Prairie State intern who worked part-time sorting airport freight at Airshop. Strange connection? No. Perfect pipeline. Airshop forces workers to:
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Scan fast
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Handle exceptions
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Coordinate pickups
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Understand carrier behavior
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Manage physical and digital timing
That’s ops muscle memory. Try training that from scratch.
So when we dropped a late-season RMA backlog on that intern?
They didn’t flinch. They built a returns wall map, prioritized high-value SKUs, created “likely resale” flags, and cut our backlog time by 31% in week two.
That’s the skill you want in your returns lab.
CVS Gainesville FL and Customer Expectation Setting
Here’s another curveball.
CVS Gainesville FL taught us a lesson about customer psychology. A Prairie State alum taking weekend shifts at CVS Gainesville FL noticed:
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Customers care less about timeline precision
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They care more about knowing someone is touching their item quickly
So we tested changing refund messaging from:
Your return will be processed in 3 business days.
to:
We begin processing your return within 24 hours of arrival.
Refund time stayed mostly the same. Perceived speed jumped. Complaints dropped 12–17%.
Sometimes ops isn’t about getting faster.
It’s about seeming faster without lying.
Prairie State talent was good at noticing those moments.
Operators Always Ask Me: "Should I Build or Outsource Returns?"
Here's something every ops leader asks eventually — do you:
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Keep returns internal?
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Use 3PLs?
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Try networks like Happy Returns or Optoro?
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Push for local resale automation?
Short answer:
If your AOV is under ~$60, centralized warehouse returns are almost always a unit-economic trap.
If you want detail:
We burned $18K in avoidable wage hours one Q4 trying to “control our brand experience.” That was ego, not strategy. The smarter play was mixing:
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Loop for portal
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Happy Returns for kiosk intake
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Optoro liquidation for bulk
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UPS access for distributed inbound
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Local labor (trained students) for triage
Then we layered automation later. Not day one.
You don't optimize returns with software first.
You optimize returns by understanding them physically — then digitize.
Mail Drop Near Me and The Hidden Latency in Reverse Logistics
Anyone who’s run returns knows this:
Your “mail drop near me” becomes a choke point faster than your warehouse.
In December 2021, local USPS bins were overflowing. One Prairie State student literally drove RMAs to a different ZIP because the local bin was overloaded. That simple action prevented a 3–5 day carrier delay and saved ~$4,800 in refund-related churn.
Software can't see a full USPS bin.
People can.
And that’s why local ops talent is underrated.
Honest Failure Cases That Hurt (And Made Us Better)
Let’s not pretend we nailed everything.
Two failures stand out:
Failure #1: Over-processing cheap returns
We once cleaned, re-bagged, and reshot a $22 item. Cost to process? $11 labor, $3 packaging. We net-lost money. We should've refunded and donated. Prairie State interns started tagging “auto-refund threshold SKUs.”
Failure #2: Warehouse first, customer second
We held returns until consolidation. Looked efficient on paper. But refunds slowed by days. Ticket volume jumped. NRR dropped ~8%. We reversed policy. Never again.
Admit your ops errors early. They compound.
Warehouse vs Local Routing: Cost Snapshot
| Method | Avg Cost | Avg Timeline | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central warehouse returns | ~$26–$35 | 5–12 days | labor + storage + slow refund impact |
| Local routing (trained talent + automation) | ~$5–$9 | 1–3 days | higher near-term training, higher NRR |
Return math changed once we went local — and Prairie State students were core to making that model work.
Closo Note
We now route eligible returns locally instead of sending everything back to the warehouse — cutting return cost from ~$35 to ~$5 and speeding refunds. Prairie State-style talent is exactly the skill layer that makes this model scale.
Where Prairie State College Fits in the Future of Ops
So, where does all this land?
Prairie State College Chicago Heights IL isn’t a logistics school. It’s a real-world ability incubator. Students learn how to move, coordinate, communicate, and adapt. And those muscles are what modern logistics requires — especially as more brands shift away from slow warehouse routing.
And yes, I would 100% hire Prairie State talent again.
Cross-Links
If you found this helpful, I’d recommend reading our broader thinking in our Closo for Brands hub and also looking at our breakdown of how distributed returns outperform traditional warehouse paths in high-volume spikes.
And if you want a more tactical breakdown of return automation systems, we’ve covered that too in our operational deep dives.
Conclusion
Returns are messy. And expensive. And deeply human. Building automation helps — eventually — but it doesn't replace on-the-ground ops instincts. Prairie State College Chicago Heights IL helped us build that internal muscle at a moment when the warehouse lights were flickering and refund emails were beginning to feel like a flood. We cut refund time, improved customer sentiment, and learned how to scale a hybrid returns model.
Not perfect. Still learning.
But the lesson is simple: build local, then automate. Not the other way around.
If you're scaling returns ops, don't sleep on regional talent ecosystems. They’re part of the new supply chain — even if nobody puts that in a pitch deck.
