BRAND FOUNDER ACADEMY FREE TOOLS · THE 3PL CROSSOVER
FREE TOOL · SET UP FULFILLMENT

The 3PL Crossover.

Packing it yourself costs materials plus your hours. A warehouse costs storage plus a fee per order. Drag the orders up and see the month the lines cross.

You are allowed to guess. The numbers in the boxes are Mauna estimates from the brand file and a guessed storage fee. Put in your own from a real quote and they get sharper.

Your two ways to ship an order

Not what you pay yourself today. What an hour spent selling instead of taping boxes is worth.
Mailer, tape, insert. Mauna estimate from the brand file: $0.65.
From the quote. Mauna estimate: $3.25. Their materials are usually inside this number; ask.
Storage plus any monthly minimum. A guess until you have a quote.
Postage is left out on purpose: you pay it either way, and a 3PL usually pays a little less.

Where the switch pays off

104
orders a month. Below it, pack it yourself. Above it, the warehouse is cheaper than your time.
The rule
Your hours are the hidden cost in self-ship. The higher you value them, the sooner the warehouse wins.
Working through this with us?

What the tool is doing

Self-ship per order = materials + (minutes to pack ÷ 60) × what your hour is worth. At low volume your hours are nearly free, so self-ship wins.

3PL per month = storage and account fees + pick-and-pack × orders. The fixed part is what makes it lose at low volume and win at high volume.

The crossover is storage ÷ (self-ship per order − pick-and-pack per order). Postage is left out because you pay it both ways.

Compare all 4 fees on a quote before you sign: receiving, storage, pick-and-pack, and shipping. A cheap pick-and-pack fee means nothing if storage is brutal.

This is one lesson inside the Launch Accelerator.This lesson decodes 3PL quotes onto one sheet, turns your packing SOP into the brief a warehouse follows, and writes the shipping policy your customers read.
SEE THE ACADEMY

Not there yet? The Fulfillment Picker. Still shipping from home? The Postage Gap.