If you're shopping for ecommerce fulfillment around Seattle-Tacoma, you've probably seen pick and pack quotes that look nothing alike. One shop says $3.50 an order, another says $6.00, and the math never lines up when your real orders show up. The trick isn't finding the lowest number. It's understanding how that number gets built, so you can tell a genuinely good rate from one that stacks up on you later.
What pick and pack actually means
Pick and pack is the core fulfillment fee. Someone on the dock pulls your items off the shelf (the pick), puts them in a box or mailer (the pack), and hands it to a carrier. It's charged per order. In the market, a single-item order usually runs somewhere around $3.50 to $8.00. Each additional item in that same order typically adds $0.50 to $1.50. Then there's packaging material on top of that.
If you're new to how a warehouse handles this end to end, our post on what a fulfillment center does walks through the full flow.
The fees that sit next to picking
Pick and pack never lives alone on an invoice. Two other lines almost always ride along:
- Receiving — what you pay to get product into the building and onto shelves, often around $25 to $50 per pallet.
- Storage — rent for the space your inventory takes up, commonly $15 to $40 per pallet each month.
Read all three together. A low pick fee paired with steep storage can cost you more than the reverse, depending on how fast your inventory turns.
What actually moves the per-order number
The per-order price isn't random. A few things push it up or down:
- Items per order. Single-item orders are cheap to pick. Multi-item orders add a per-item charge every time.
- SKU complexity. Lots of similar SKUs, size and color variants, serial numbers — all slow the pick and raise the rate.
- Kitting and assembly. Bundling items into a set before they ship is real labor, and it's usually billed as a project fee.
- Special packaging. Branded boxes, inserts, gift notes, fragile-item protection — each adds handling time.
- Carrier selection. Which carrier and service level you pick changes the shipping cost sitting right next to the pack fee.
How to read a per-order quote
When a quote lands, don't stop at the headline pick fee. Ask what's bundled in and what isn't. Three questions catch most surprises: Is packaging material included or billed separately? What does the second and third item in an order cost? Are kitting or project fees quoted anywhere?
A $3.50 single-item pick looks great until your average order carries three items and materials get billed as their own line. Add it up on a real order profile, not a best-case one. Pull last month's orders, count the items, and run the quote against them. That's the honest number.
Why a cheap pick fee can mislead
A rock-bottom pick rate often means the cost moved somewhere else. Materials get unbundled. Kitting shows up as a project charge. The additional-item fee runs high. None of that is dishonest on its own — but if you only compared headline numbers, you compared the wrong thing. What you want is a quote where every line is visible before you commit, not after your first invoice.
That's how we run things here in Kent. One WMS-run warehouse, one team, one invoice, and shipping that goes out 24/7 across Puget Sound. You can see the full fulfillment service and how the order fulfillment process works with a 24/7 3PL.
Get a number you can actually plan around
If you want a straight quote with every line spelled out, look at our pricing and send over your order profile. We'll put together a quote against your real orders, not a made-up single-item order that flatters the math. No surprises on the first invoice — that's the whole point.
