Do You Collect From My Factory? The First Mile Into a China Fulfilment Warehouse

Short answer: goods come into our China sites by your supplier's delivery or by a collection move we arrange and charge. Collection exists as a service; it is not a free default attached to the warehousing, and it has never been priced into a blanket promise.

The three receiving points and what each is for

Shenzhen (3,000 m² of floor plus our office), Dongguan (8,000 m²) and Suzhou (13,000 m²) sit close to different manufacturing belts, and each takes a different kind of inbound rather than anything that turns up. Ecommerce stock — cartons destined for a single-order, parcel-channel storefront — comes into Dongguan, because that is where pick-and-pack for small cartons is built. B2B freight, pallets and crated goods come into Shenzhen, which is where the forklift and the container door sit rather than a parcel chute. A supplier around Kunshan, Ningbo or Hangzhou feeds Suzhou. Where the outbound channel departs Guangdong — several of our consolidated parcel lines do — the goods have to arrive in Guangdong even when the factory sits closer to Shanghai, because a carton landed at the wrong building crosses the country twice instead of once.

That is also the honest answer to the question behind your question: there is no warehouse for us in Shaoxing or Ningbo. Stock from a Zhejiang factory reaches Suzhou by the supplier's own carrier or by a collection we quote.

What collection costs and why it is not free

A van that drives to a factory, waits while goods are loaded, and returns to our dock consumes driver hours and vehicle time that have nothing to do with how you store or ship. We therefore quote it against the pickup address, the weight and volume, and the loading conditions, and it appears as its own line on the proposal. Where a factory will not hand over goods without a written delivery instruction, we handle that as part of the booking rather than as a favour.

We are straight about the reason this is written on our site: an earlier version of our marketing treated collection from a Pearl River delta factory as part of the warehousing, at no separate cost. That is no longer how we operate, and a customer who reads an old page and expects a van without an invoice line is a customer we would rather warn before the first booking.

Two house rules sit behind that description. Inbound dates are given as an approximate window rather than a fixed arrival, because a factory's loading day moves; and any packing we have not seen before — a new carton format, a new pallet pattern, timber framing — is checked against the outbound channel lane by lane before the booking is made. The measurements taken at receiving are also what a later conversation about chargeable weight or declared value is built on, which is why they are recorded once, carefully.

Receiving: what happens when the boxes arrive

1. An inbound list exists before the truck does — created in the WMS, matched to expected quantities.
2. Cartons are counted against that list by SKU, and shortfalls are photographed before the pallet is broken down.
3. Units are checked to the agreed standard; anything that fails is quarantined and reported the same day rather than shelved quietly.
4. Dimensions and packed weights are recorded once, properly, and become the basis of every later quote — including which of the two chargeable weights governs your parcel.
5. Storage is charged on the space a customer's stock occupies. Stock that arrives and leaves promptly costs nothing to keep; a slow-turning line is a different conversation and is quoted as one.

Wood packing, because it stops shipments

Solid timber skids and crates are the one part of the first mile that can hold a consignment at a foreign port. The treatment mark required internationally sits with the facility that treats the timber and applies the stamp — we specify compliant material, we check what arrives, and we do not claim to issue a mark ourselves. If your machine lands on an untreated skid, transferring it to compliant framing at our site is a day's work; finding the same skid at a destination terminal is a demurrage invoice. The International Plant Protection Convention publishes the standard behind the mark.

First-mile questions sellers ask on a first call

Can my supplier ship straight to you without telling me?

Yes, and it is the cleanest route. We need the supplier's packing list and a booking reference so the delivery is expected; a carton arriving with no inbound record sits in the receiving lane until someone can identify its owner.

Do you handle returns from my overseas customers at the China warehouse?

Not as a service we sell. Overseas parcels come back to China at prohibitive cost, and the destination stations are not return-acceptance points, so we do not present that as available. Where a customer needs a disposition decision — write-off, local liquidation, or repair in-country — we help model it, but we will not promise a reverse flow we do not run.

What is the smallest first order you will take?

There is no minimum order quantity for shipping, and no minimum to open an account. Practically, one pallet or one carton of test stock arrives the same way as a container does.

Is inspection of my goods before dispatch something you do?

Inbound checks against your standard are part of receiving. Third-party pre-shipment inspection arranged at the factory on your behalf is a separate instruction and is quoted separately, because it consumes hours at a site that is not ours.

Inside the receiving floor your goods land on

If the first mile is your cost, the second one is ours to get right: how a cloud warehouse actually runs describes the receiving, counting and put-away sequence your carton passes through, and the case for our three Chinese sites explains which one a given factory should ship into. Where packing is timber rather than board, the marking regime belongs to the International Plant Protection Convention's ISPM-15 standard, and the stamp is applied by the treatment facility, never by us.

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).