3PL WAREHOUSE — WAREHOUSING & DISTRIBUTION

What a 3PL warehouse is, and what you are actually buying

A 3PL warehouse is a third-party building that holds your inventory and ships it for you, so the space, the crew, the equipment and the software are somebody else's capital rather than yours. You buy an outcome — freight received, stock held, orders out — instead of a lease, a forklift fleet and a hiring problem.

What that means in line items is simple enough to check against any quote: receiving per container or pallet, storage per pallet-month while it sits, pick and pack per order or per line, and outbound freight at cost plus handling. If a 3PL cannot show you those four separately, you cannot compare them to anyone, and that is usually deliberate.

3PL warehouse versus leasing your own space

• Commitment. A lease in the Kent Valley is measured in years. A 3PL warehouse scales down after peak as easily as it scales up, which is the whole point for a seasonal or growing brand.
• Cost shape. Your own building is mostly fixed cost — rent, racking, forklifts, WMS, and people whether volume arrives or not. A 3PL is mostly variable, tied to what actually moves.
• Break-even. There is a real crossover. Once volume is steady, high and predictable enough to keep a building busy year-round, owning the operation gets cheaper. We will tell you when you are approaching that point rather than wait for you to work it out.
• Freight included. A 3PL warehouse next to the ports also controls the leg that usually breaks — container drayage from the terminal into the building, on the free days rather than after them.

What to ask a 3PL warehouse before you sign

• Where is the building, really? Many Seattle 3PLs are in the Kent Valley, ours included. That is an advantage, not a secret — it is where the industrial space and the port lanes are. Be suspicious of anyone vague about the address.
• Who handles the container? If drayage is a separate vendor, the demurrage clock belongs to nobody.
• What is the cut-off, and who is on shift after it? A cut-off nobody is staffed to hit is a marketing number.
• Can they do retail and direct-to-customer? Routing guides, EDI, labelling and appointment scheduling are a different discipline from picking single parcels. Most buildings are honest about doing one well.
• What happens to returns? Ask who inspects, who decides restock versus scrap, and how fast it goes back into sellable stock. See returns processing.

Warehouse or distribution center? You need both, in one place

Warehousing and distribution get sold as separate services, and the industry draws a line between them: a warehouse stores goods and is priced by the pallet-month; a distribution center moves goods and is priced by the touch. In practice the line is where money leaks. Freight stored in a cheap warehouse still has to reach a distribution operation somewhere, and every transfer between buildings adds a truck, a day and a handling fee.

We run both functions on one floor: reserve stock lives in racking, fast movers stage near the dock, and the same crew that received your container picks the orders that leave. No transfer leg, no second vendor, no gap where a week disappears.

The types of warehousing, honestly compared

• Public warehousing — space and labour by the month, no commitment. Right for seasonal overflow and for testing a market. This is most of what we do, priced by the pallet.
• Contract warehousing — dedicated space, team and rate locked for a term. Cheaper per pallet, and worth it once your volume is steady enough to predict.
• Bonded warehousing — imported goods held under customs control, duty deferred until the goods release. We operate bonded storage for import freight.
• 3PL warehousing — all of the above run as a service, together with the freight that feeds it: drayage from the terminal, transloading at the dock, pick and pack going out.

What warehousing services include

"Warehousing services" is a broad label. In practice it is a stack of jobs that happen to your freight between the inbound door and the outbound truck:

• Receiving and put-away — freight counted against the ASN, inspected and racked, straight off an import container when it comes off the port.
• Storage — reserve stock in racking, priced by the pallet-month; scale up for peak and back down after. See warehouse storage.
• Inventory management — cycle counts, real-time stock visibility and low-stock alerts, so the count on screen matches the count on the shelf.
• Pick, pack and ship — orders picked to retailer or parcel spec and handed to the carrier the same day, through pick and pack fulfillment.
• Kitting and value-add — bundling, labelling, FBA prep and light assembly before goods ship.
• Cross-dock and transfer — freight that never needs storage moves straight across the dock with cross-docking.

Run as a 3PL, all of it sits under one roof and one team. If you are weighing a 3PL warehouse against leasing your own space, our guides to what a 3PL warehouse is and choosing a 3PL in Seattle or Tacoma lay out the trade-offs.

Distribution: retail and direct-to-customer are different jobs

Retail distribution is a compliance discipline. Chains publish routing guides — carton specs, label placement, EDI notices, appointment windows — and a pallet that misses the spec gets refused at the dock, shipped back and charged back. We build retailer-ready freight for Costco, Target, Walmart and Fred Meyer, and the routing guide is read before the first carton is packed, not after the first chargeback.

Direct-to-customer is a speed discipline: single orders picked, packed and handed to the parcel carrier the same day they arrive by cut-off. Different racking, different packing bench, same building — see fulfillment.

Why distribute from the Kent Valley

Running warehousing and distribution from Kent puts the operation between the Port of Seattle and the Port of Tacoma, which shortens the inbound leg to minutes instead of hours. Outbound, ground freight reaches the whole Pacific Northwest fast: Seattle same-day, Portland overnight, Spokane, Boise and Northern California on day two. One region, one to two transit days, no second warehouse needed to cover it. More on the local picture in our guides to warehousing in Washington State and the Kent, WA warehousing scene.

What that means in money: fewer transfer legs, a shorter demurrage window on the import side — run your own numbers in the demurrage calculator — and freight consolidated into full trucks instead of parcelled LTL. The cost mechanics are laid out on our pricing breakdown.

Common questions

What is the difference between a warehouse and a distribution center?

A warehouse stores goods; a distribution center moves them. Storage is priced by the pallet-month and optimised for density, while distribution is priced by the touch and optimised for speed - orders in, picked, and out the door. Most real operations, ours included, run both from the same building: reserve stock in racking, fast movers near the dock.

What types of warehousing are there?

Public warehousing rents space and labour month to month with no commitment. Contract warehousing locks a dedicated space, team and rate for a term - cheaper per pallet, less flexible. Bonded warehousing holds imported goods under customs control so duty is deferred until release. A 3PL like us runs all of these as a service, together with the freight.

Do you distribute to retailers as well as end customers?

Yes, and they are different disciplines. Retail distribution means routing guides, EDI, labelling and appointment scheduling for chains like Costco, Target or Fred Meyer - miss the spec and the pallet gets refused. Direct-to-customer means picking single orders and handing them to parcel carriers the same day.

Where do you distribute from?

One facility in Kent, WA, minutes from the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma. Ground reaches the whole Pacific Northwest in one to two days: Seattle same-day, Portland next-day, Spokane, Boise and Northern California on day two.

What is 3PL warehousing?

A third-party logistics (3PL) provider runs warehousing as a service for you: receiving, storage, inventory management, pick and pack, and shipping, usually bundled with the freight that feeds it. Instead of leasing a building and hiring a crew, you pay for the space and labour you actually use, and scale it up or down with your volume.

How much do warehousing services cost?

Storage is usually priced per pallet per month, with receiving charged when freight arrives and a per-order or per-line fee when it ships. Volume and term length bring the rate down - contract space is cheaper per pallet than month-to-month public storage. Send your pallet count, how long you need the space and your order volume, and we quote real numbers rather than a range.