Which Dock Takes the Cartons: Routing Inbound Goods Across Three China Warehouses

A 3PL fulfillment network is only as calm as its inbound rule. Sellers plan the outbound side in detail — channels, cut-offs, labels — and then send goods into whichever building is nearest to the factory that made them, which is the moment three warehouses stop behaving like one network. The routing question is not administrative: a carton that enters the wrong dock either waits, or travels at someone's expense, and both outcomes show up later as a dispatch nobody can explain.

Three buildings, three different jobs

Dongguan is our main building for business-to-consumer parcels and single-order work, because that is where the pick benches, the labeling stations and the evening handover sit. Shenzhen takes the business-to-business side: pallets, crates and goods too large or too awkward to be treated as parcels. Suzhou exists for the other geography — collecting from suppliers across the Yangtze delta and merging their output into one consignment before anything moves south. Those are functional assignments, not preferences, and they come from what each building is equipped to receive rather than from map convenience.

Why the departure region is decided at arrival

Goods that will travel on a lane departing from Guangdong still have to enter through a Guangdong dock, so an oversized or crated shipment that arrives in Suzhou has to move again before it can be booked. The reverse is not true: a parcel range that enters through the south stays where the picking is. This is the single inbound rule that produces the most surprise, because it is invisible in a quote and obvious on a dock floor. The oversized handling behind it is written out on the crating and lift-plan page.

Wood, stamps and the receiving bay

A crate is a packing decision with a customs consequence, and a stamp is evidence somebody else applied. Inbound goods on wooden packing arrive at the building equipped to inspect and record it, which is not the parcel dock; the questions a receiving desk has to ask before timber is accepted are set out on the wood-packing marks page. A pallet wrapped at origin and counted at destination is also where a shortage stops being one supplier's problem and becomes ours to document, which is why mixed freight is counted at the door rather than after the wrap goes to salvage.

Consolidation is a routing job before it is a shipping job

Merging several factories into one consignment is the reason the Suzhou dock exists, and it works when the cartons arrive individually counted and marked per factory. It stops working when suppliers send unlabeled mixed freight, because the merge then has to open, recount and repack, and the saving from one outbound shipment is spent on the inbound handling that makes it honest. Parcel-scale consolidation behaves the same way at the other end of the process, as the small-parcel page describes.

What we will not absorb

We will not quietly re-route goods that entered through the wrong dock and then bill the difference as though it were a normal cost of the order, and we do not offer uncharged collection from a factory door — arranging pickup is a service we quote against the address, the weight and volume, and the loading conditions, and it appears as its own line on a plan. An inbound rule agreed in advance is free; a routing mistake discovered on arrival never is, and the choice of which dock your suppliers write on their waybill stays with you.

Questions this desk gets asked

Can I send everything to one warehouse and let you sort it?

You can, and it costs you a handling step. Parcels, pallets and crated freight are equipped to be received in different buildings, so a single inbound point means goods that must move again internally before they can be picked or booked.

My supplier is in Suzhou but the goods sail from Guangdong. Where do they enter?

Into the Guangdong dock for the lane they will travel on, unless you want the Suzhou building to merge them with other suppliers first and move the merged consignment south. Both work; the difference is which handling you are paying for and how many counts you keep.

Do you collect goods from my factory on request?

We can arrange it, charged and quoted separately against the address and the loading conditions. It is not included free in an inbound price, and we would rather show it as a line than hide it inside a per-unit fee.

By Tony Zhang, FulfillDock by SBT. Written after a pallet of crates was booked into the wrong dock and had to travel again, which is the cheapest way to learn an inbound rule. Published 24 October 2026, last checked 24 October 2026