South Florida is one of the busiest gateways for goods entering the United States, and for a growing number of ecommerce brands it is also the smartest place to store and ship inventory. If your products arrive from Latin America, Europe, or even Asia through the Panama Canal, this guide walks through how the import to fulfillment chain works here and how to set it up right.
Two major seaports sit within a short drive of each other: PortMiami and Port Everglades. Together they handle millions of tons of containerized cargo a year, with deep trade lanes to Latin America and the Caribbean, strong connections to Europe, and growing Asia service through the Panama Canal. Add Miami International Airport, one of the top air cargo hubs in the country, and you get a region where inventory can arrive by sea or air and be on a warehouse shelf the same week.
When your container clears customs, the clock starts. Every day it sits at the port accrues demurrage charges, and every extra inland mile adds trucking cost. A fulfillment warehouse in the Miami area keeps that drayage leg short: the container is picked up, delivered, unloaded, counted against your packing list, and received into inventory. From that moment you can start selling, often the same day the goods land on the shelf.
Good receiving is more than unloading boxes. Floor loaded and palletized containers are unloaded and sorted, units are counted and inspected against your documents, discrepancies are flagged the same day, and everything goes live in your inventory dashboard. At ShipByClick, receiving is priced flat at $0.15 per unit, so a full container costs exactly what the packing list says it should.
Once inventory lives in South Florida, ground shipping reaches Florida, Georgia, and the Southeast in zones 1 to 3, which means one to two day delivery for a large and fast growing customer base. Orders received by the daily cutoff ship the same business day, with 99.8% shipping accuracy measured on every order. For brands whose customers spread nationwide, pairing the Miami area warehouse with a West Coast location covers the whole country: we broke down that decision in our guide on choosing between an East Coast and a West Coast warehouse.
The whole point of a transparent 3PL is that you can model this before you commit: $0.15 per unit received, $1.75 per order picked and packed, $0.57 per cubic foot of storage, zero monthly software fees, and no contracts, with the freedom to leave on 30 days notice. Full numbers are on our pricing page, and our breakdown of what ecommerce fulfillment actually costs explains every line item.
Getting started takes days, not months: connect your store, route your next container to the warehouse, and start selling the moment the inventory lands. If you import through South Florida and want your goods selling instead of sitting, that is exactly the operation we built.