Why No Serious China Fulfilment Partner Publishes a Rate Card, and What Moves Yours

Short answer: a published rate list flatters whoever has the least suitable cargo and misleads everyone else. The honest version of pricing is a short exchange of facts followed by a written proposal with its assumptions visible.

The seven variables behind a number

1. Chargeable weight. Whichever is greater of scale weight and dimensional weight, computed on the divisor the chosen lane uses — which is why packing choice is a pricing decision.
2. Band steps. Parcel ladders are stepped, so a carton that lands just over a step gets charged as though it landed well over it.
3. Destination and postcode class. A major metro delivery and a regional one are not the same buy on most lines, and remote-area schedules are usually their own table.
4. Category and documents. Anything that needs a test, a mark or a declaration carries the handling of producing that file.
5. Duty and tax mode. Duty-paid and duty-unpaid entries price differently, and statutory charges — a per-item customs fee on low-value EU consignments, for instance, or destination VAT — pass through whatever the freight number looks like.
6. Volume and rhythm. A customer shipping forty parcels a week and one shipping four hundred present different line mix to us, and channel access follows volume.
7. Value density. Expensive, small goods need a different liability structure than cheap bulky ones; cover can be placed for you, priced against the value declared and paid on the policy's own terms.

A proposal therefore carries three things a table cannot: the assumptions it was built on, transit stated as an approximate window rather than a date, and a marker on anything new to the account as subject to channel confirmation. Those three are the difference between a quote and an estimate with denials attached.

What a public price list can honestly tell you

Enough to compare like for like, which is exactly what a single column cannot do. Two other reasons we keep figures off the website: our channel set of 50+ lanes changes with contracts and with space, and a posted price is a promise about a lane we may not be offering that month. What we do publish is our scope — the receiving sites, the five service lines, the accuracy standard, the response commitment — because those are stable and checkable.

If a competitor's sheet shows a figure that looks better than our proposal, bring it to us. The three questions we ask in return are whether it includes the registration and clearance handling, whether it is computed on actual or dimensional weight, and whether the destination tax line is inside or outside. Those three usually explain the gap.

Send these six items and the proposal comes back fast

1. Product photos and the packed carton dimensions plus packed weight.
2. Average order composition: units per order, and how many SKUs.
3. Monthly order count with a destination split, ideally as a raw export rather than a summary.
4. Sale price per item, so the declared-value position and any ceiling issue are visible.
5. Any restricted characteristic — cell, magnet, liquid, powder, food contact, child-facing product.
6. Your required delivery promise to your customer, so the lane is chosen against it rather than after it.

Pre-sales modelling of that data, and a tailored plan, are free: it costs us an hour and it is how we win the account. A quote goes out with a validity window on it, because the inputs beneath it are not permanent, and it states which channels it assumed.

Pricing questions from new customers

Will you match a quote I already hold?

We will explain where our number differs and why. Matching an arrangement we cannot operate honestly is not a way to win business.

Are there minimum order quantities or monthly minimums?

There is no minimum order quantity to ship, and we do not hide a monthly commitment inside a rate. If a volume floor is needed to access a particular channel, it is named on the proposal.

What does warehousing cost when stock sits?

Storage is charged on occupied space and only once stock stops moving quickly, so a fast-turning catalogue does not pay for a shelf it does not use. That is the reason our receiving team photographs and measures at goods-in rather than at invoice time.

Do you charge for the exceptions I create?

Re-work caused by data we were not given — a missing phone number, a wrong postcode, an address without a unit — is handled at cost and reported, because the fix belongs upstream at checkout. The economics of a failed delivery are set out on our page about undeliverable parcels rather than buried in an invoice.

How is accuracy proven?

Each despatched carton is matched back to its pick record, and our accuracy stands at 99.5% or better once the denominator is stated — counted per order line, because a rate without its denominator is decoration. When something does go wrong, the first reply comes inside two hours; closing it within a further twenty-four is the working target.

How to price a partner without a price list

The honest substitute for a tariff is a structure, and our explanation of 3PL pricing models lays out the components a quotation should separate — the per-order line, the pick-and-pack, the storage position and the freight leg. If you are running a wider search, the fulfilment RFP template is the document to send, and we would rather answer it than trade rate cards.

Put the question to us with your own numbers. FulfillDock by SBT has moved China-origin ecommerce goods since 2011 from three staffed sites — Shenzhen, Dongguan and Suzhou, 24,000 m² of warehouse between them — and the pre-sales modelling behind any answer above costs nothing. Write to Tony Zhang at tonyfulfill@gmail.com or reach him on WhatsApp at +86 186 6591 6878. Our receiving standards sit on the quality page, the company record on About us, and how order data is handled in the privacy notice. Project cargo and traditional B2B freight run through our sister brand, FulfillNexa by SBT (www.fulfillnexa.com).