Toolbert
Stainless
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2003
- Location
- Vashon Island, WA
So our accidental little manufacturing biz is located in an inconvenient corner of the PNW, on an island accessed only via ferry and where everything is expensive, including our warehouse space. A good part of our rent is for storing finished inventory ready for shipment, most of which is shipped direct to customers in the eastern half of the U.S., where the typical ground ship charge is $25 more than it would be if shipped from e.g. Ohio.
At some point, it becomes attractive to ship a full 55' trailer a couple times a year, and pay someone else to store the boxes and print labels. I think what we want is a fulfillment center, not a distributor, not Amazon. We take the orders, handle the $$, ship on our Fedex account, & just pay someone to warehouse & print the labels.
Anyone have any experience with this, from either side of the deal?
Before anyone says it please, well Amazon does many things great, and one of them is charging fees way out of proportion to their value to us, mostly for services we don't need.
We have a separate problem with Canada, where our package are too large for USPS, and the brokerage + tax collection fees from Fedex are just nutty - another $50 per package on top of the actual shipping cost, duties and sales taxes - and then of course most of the boxes go to Ontario & Quebec.
For this, we'd ship a few pallets per year, and can justify higher cost. So a separate question is order fulfillment for U.S. manufacturers who ship bulky packages to Canada.
We ship everything via Fedex Ground, with ship charges in the 48 states ranging from $20 to $65. We'll spend around $100K with Fedex in 2013, any scenario that cuts that in half is worth some study.
thanks,
Bob
At some point, it becomes attractive to ship a full 55' trailer a couple times a year, and pay someone else to store the boxes and print labels. I think what we want is a fulfillment center, not a distributor, not Amazon. We take the orders, handle the $$, ship on our Fedex account, & just pay someone to warehouse & print the labels.
Anyone have any experience with this, from either side of the deal?
Before anyone says it please, well Amazon does many things great, and one of them is charging fees way out of proportion to their value to us, mostly for services we don't need.
We have a separate problem with Canada, where our package are too large for USPS, and the brokerage + tax collection fees from Fedex are just nutty - another $50 per package on top of the actual shipping cost, duties and sales taxes - and then of course most of the boxes go to Ontario & Quebec.
For this, we'd ship a few pallets per year, and can justify higher cost. So a separate question is order fulfillment for U.S. manufacturers who ship bulky packages to Canada.
We ship everything via Fedex Ground, with ship charges in the 48 states ranging from $20 to $65. We'll spend around $100K with Fedex in 2013, any scenario that cuts that in half is worth some study.
thanks,
Bob
