A brand asks a 3PL "how much do you charge?" and gets a rate card back. The rate card has eleven lines. The brand cannot tell whether their business would cost a few hundred a month or several thousand, because they do not know how their orders map to those lines.
Here is how a 3PL quote is actually assembled, using example figures you would replace with your own.
Component one: storage
Charged per pallet, per shelf or per bin, per week or per month. The driver is how many SKUs a brand holds and how deep the stock is. A brand with forty SKUs and slow-moving lines needs more space than one with eight fast sellers.
Component two: inbound handling
Charged per pallet or per carton received, sometimes with a booking-in fee. Brands importing full containers pay differently from those receiving a few cartons weekly.
Component three: picking
Usually a fee for the first item in an order and a smaller fee for each additional item. This is where order profile matters enormously: a hundred single-item orders cost less to pick than fifty five-item orders.
Component four: packing and materials
Boxes, mailers, void fill, branded inserts and gift wrapping. Brands wanting a premium unboxing experience should expect this line to be meaningful.
Component five: shipping
Carrier rates by weight, size and destination, usually passed through with a handling margin. International adds customs documentation.
The worked example
Take a brand shipping eight hundred orders a month, averaging two items, with thirty SKUs occupying twelve pallets, receiving one container a quarter and using a branded box. The quote becomes: twelve pallets of storage, one inbound container handling charge spread across the quarter, eight hundred first-item picks plus eight hundred additional-item picks, eight hundred boxes with inserts, and carrier costs by destination mix. The brand can now see which line dominates and where growth will cost them.
What to capture
Monthly order volume, average items per order, number of SKUs, current pallet or bin count, inbound frequency and format, packaging requirements, peak season multiplier, returns volume and which sales channels need connecting.
Brand: How much would fulfilment cost for us? Assistant: The pricing page shows the rate for storage, inbound handling, picking and packing. To estimate, could you share roughly how many orders you ship a month, the average number of items per order, how many SKUs you hold and how much space your stock currently takes?
Peak season
Brands underestimate peak. Asking for their busiest month, not their average, prevents a quote that collapses in November.
Related enquiries
Growing brands arrive with the same vague brief described in warehousing enquiries from growing online brands, and freight quoting has the identical missing-detail problem, covered in freight quote requests missing weights and dimensions. Buyers of other complex systems face similar structures, as in battery storage questions solar buyers ask.
Being clear about extras
Hidden charges destroy 3PL relationships. Listing everything, including returns handling and ad hoc project work, builds trust, in the way described in hidden costs of AI chatbot pricing.
Getting started
Publish your rate card with a worked example and capture volumes at any hour. SpideyChat for logistics providers answers from your published pricing. Plans are on the pricing page, and the chatbot ROI calculator helps size the time saved.