Guide
Two 3PL quotes almost never price the same things the same way. This guide is the method 3PL Hub uses to put five to eight bids on one footing: fix the volumes, restate every rate on the same line items, price courier on the real parcel mix, and compare cost per order with and without shipping.
Market rates for every line are in the 3PL pricing and rates guide. The full RFP process is in how to run a 3PL RFP.
Start here
Brands compare 3PL quotes by reading the pick and pack rates, then checking one cell on each courier rate card: the rate at their average parcel weight and average zone. Both halves of that method fail. Pick and pack is 20 to 30% of the invoice, so a difference there rarely changes the answer. Courier is around two thirds of the invoice, and the average parcel does not exist: a brand's shipments spread across weights and zones, and two rate cards can cross each other several times across that spread.
The two things brands miss when comparing courier rates are surcharges and the dim divisor. The third is picking the average weight and average zone off a rate card and calling that the shipping cost. Say your average order is 4 lb to zone 5. 3PL 1 is $7.00 on the rate card and 3PL 2 is $7.50, so 3PL 1 looks a lot cheaper. Now imagine 20% of your shipments are 10 lb to zone 5, where 3PL 1 is $14.00 and 3PL 2 is $11.50. The cheap one just became the expensive one.
On those numbers, with 80% of parcels at 4 lb and 20% at 10 lb, 3PL 1 averages $8.40 a parcel and 3PL 2 averages $8.30. The rate-card glance picked the wrong 3PL, and on 20,000 parcels a month the gap is $2,000 a month in the wrong direction before surcharges are counted. The steps below exist so that never happens.
Step 1
Every bid gets priced against the same year of real activity. Pull twelve months from your store and warehouse: orders by channel and month, units per order, pallets or bins on hand each month, inbound receipts by pallet and carton, returns received, and every parcel with its billed weight, dimensions and destination ZIP. Put those quantities in the volume column of one sheet and do not let any 3PL change them. A bid that says "we assumed 1.2 units per order" when you ship 1.8 is a bid on a different business.
The 3PL Hub bid sheet template has the volume column, 45 fixed line items and up to six 3PL columns, and calculates everything below once rates are entered.
Step 2
3PLs bundle differently. One quotes an order fee with the first pick included; another quotes a lower order fee and a separate first-pick charge, which is why the market median order fee is $1.85 once first picks are added and only $1.50 if they are ignored. One bills storage per pallet, another per cubic foot, a third per bin. Some include packaging in the order fee; most bill it at cost plus a markup. Take each bid and re-key it onto your sheet, line by line, converting units where you have to (a 48 x 40 x 60 inch pallet is 66 cubic feet; use your real pallet height).
Where a 3PL sends its own rate card instead of completing your sheet, use the rates it sent and re-key them yourself. Where a line is missing, ask for it before scoring. A blank cell is a cost you have not been told about yet.
| Line | How bids differ | How to restate |
|---|---|---|
| Order fee | First pick included, or first pick billed separately | Order fee plus first pick, one number per bid |
| Additional units | Per unit, per line, or tiered after N units | Apply to your real units-per-order distribution, then divide by orders |
| Storage | Per pallet, bin, shelf, cubic foot or square foot; average or peak-day occupancy | Convert to monthly dollars on your real pallet count and peak month |
| Receiving | Per pallet, per carton, per unit, per container, or hourly | Price your actual inbound receipts for the year, including floor-loaded containers at the hourly rate |
| Packaging | Included, at cost, or cost plus 10 to 30% | Add a per-order packaging cost to every bid that excludes it |
| Returns | Per return, per unit inspected, restock and disposal separately | Price your real return count and units per return |
| B2B and retail | Per order, per carton, per pallet, plus routing guide and EDI fees | Send five real retail orders with the RFP and ask each 3PL to price them; compare the totals |
Step 3
Take the parcel export from Step 1 and rate every parcel on every 3PL's card: service level, billed weight band, zone from the 3PL's proposed warehouse. Sum the result per 3PL. That total, divided by parcels, is each bid's real cost per parcel. It will differ from the rate at your average weight and zone, sometimes by a dollar or more, because the cards cross.
Ask for the full rate card by zone and weight band, never a blended rate. A blended rate is only accurate for the shipment profile it was built on. If a 3PL will only send a shipping analysis it ran on your data, ask for the rate card and the surcharge schedule behind it so you can run your own.
The best case is when the 3PL runs a shipping analysis on the brand's data and also sends me the rate charts and accessorials so I can run mine. If the two land within about $0.20 of each other on an average shipment, the method is right. What is left is usually how zones were applied to each shipment, or how DAS, EDAS and residential were classified, which differs by courier.
The zone depends on the origin warehouse, so a 3PL bidding from Pennsylvania and one bidding from Nevada are rating the same parcel file to different zones. That is the comparison you want; it is the cost of shipping your customers from that building.
Step 4
A base rate is the start of the courier cost. On top of it sit residential delivery (80 to 95% of DTC parcels), DAS and extended DAS for the share of your ZIPs that carry them, fuel, and peak surcharges from October to December. Ask every bidder for each surcharge as a dollar amount or percentage on the bid sheet, then apply them to the parcel file. A bid that lists surcharges "at cost" or "as incurred" is incomplete until the numbers are on the sheet.
Then the dim divisor. Carriers bill the greater of actual weight and cubic inches divided by the divisor. Published divisors sit at 139; 3PL-negotiated divisors run from 166 to 400. For a 14 x 12 x 10 inch box weighing 2 lb, a 166 divisor bills 11 lb and a 250 divisor bills 7 lb, four weight bands apart on every rate card. Put each 3PL's divisor on the sheet, rate the parcel file at that divisor, and treat a 3PL that will not commit to a divisor in writing as bidding at 139. The dimensional weight calculator shows the effect on any box.
Send the 3PLs accurate product dimensions and the parcel export. A 3PL pricing courier from a SKU list with no dimensions is guessing at billed weight, and the guess is corrected on the first invoice.
Step 5
Per-order rates decide the ranking for large brands. Fixed fees decide it for everyone else. Across 3PL Hub RFP bids, about 4 in 10 charge a monthly account management fee (median $750), 1 in 10 a software or platform fee (median $500), 1 in 4 a setup fee (median $1,500), and 1 in 3 state a monthly minimum. Spread over 800 orders a month, a $750 account fee is $0.94 an order, more than the gap between most bidders' pick rates. Enter every one of them as an annual cost on the sheet, and enter the minimum as the amount by which it exceeds the modeled spend in your slowest months.
Step 6
The sheet now gives two numbers per bid: cost per order excluding courier, which is the cleanest measure of what the 3PL itself charges, and cost per order all-in, which is what hits the P&L. Rank on both. Across the RFP dataset the medians run from $2.54 to $6.06 excluding courier and $7.85 to $16.72 all-in depending on volume, so a bid far outside its band needs a specific reason: a late cutoff, hazmat, cold chain, serial capture, or a service level the others did not quote.
I want brands to track cost per order as a percentage of average order value, the same way they track marketing, payroll and product cost. Logistics as a share of the order is the number that tells you whether a quote is good for your business, and it is the number that should move when you renegotiate.
Price is one of four ranks. Fit (did the proposal solution your operation?), SLAs the 3PL will sign, and references from clients like you fill the other three, and the winner of a well-run RFP is usually in the top three on price and the top two on fit. The scoring step of the RFP guide covers the last three.
Checklist
Your twelve months of orders, units, pallets, receipts, returns and parcels, unchanged by any bidder.
Half of 3PLs quote it separately. A $1.20 order fee plus a $0.65 first pick is $1.85.
Every parcel, every card, from each 3PL's proposed warehouse. Never the rate at the average weight and zone.
Residential, DAS, EDAS, fuel and peak on the sheet, applied to your ZIP mix.
Each bidder's divisor on the sheet and the parcel file rated at it.
Account, software, setup and the excess of any minimum over modeled spend.
A per-order packaging cost on every bid that excludes it.
Retail and wholesale fees are where invoices most often surprise. Have each bidder price the same five orders.
Excluding courier for the 3PL's own pricing; all-in for the P&L. Rank on both.
3PL Hub runs managed RFPs and quote reviews for brands: one bid sheet, courier rated on your parcel file, surcharges and dim weight applied, and a ranked recommendation. Paid by the brand only; no commission from 3PLs.
FAQ
Fix one year of real volumes, restate every bid on the same line items (adding the first pick to the order fee where it is quoted separately), rate your actual parcel file on each 3PL's courier card with surcharges and the dim divisor applied, add fixed fees as annual dollars, and rank on cost per order with and without courier. Then score fit, SLAs and references.
Rate cards cross. A 3PL cheaper at 4 lb zone 5 can be more expensive at 10 lb zone 5, and 20% of parcels at the heavier weight is enough to reverse the ranking. Only rating the whole parcel file shows the real cost per parcel.
Use the rates it sent and re-key them onto your sheet yourself. If it sends only a shipping analysis, ask for the rate card and surcharge schedule behind it so you can run your own; the two should land within about $0.20 per average shipment.
Courier surcharges and the dim divisor for every brand; account management, software, setup and monthly minimums for brands under about 3,000 orders a month, where fixed fees per order outweigh differences in pick rates.
In 3PL Hub RFP data the median cost per order excluding courier runs from $2.54 for brands over 20,000 orders a month to $6.06 under 1,000, and $7.85 to $16.72 all-in. Track it as a percentage of average order value.
Yes. Send the same five real retail or wholesale orders to every bidder and compare what each charges for them. B2B order fees are one of the two lines that most often surprise brands on the first invoices.
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