3PL Storage Costs Explained: Pallet vs Bin vs Cubic Metre

UK 3PLs charge for storage in three main ways - per pallet, per bin, or per cubic metre per week - and the same stock can cost meaningfully different amounts under each model. A seller with 4,000 small SKU-mixed units pays through the nose on pallet pricing and very little on bins; a seller with 40 cartons of one product is the reverse. Understanding how each model works, and which suits your stock profile, is worth real money every single week. Here's the breakdown, with the numbers.

The three models

Per pallet per week. The workhorse of UK warehousing. You're charged for each pallet position your stock occupies on racking, whether the pallet is stacked full or half empty. Typical UK market rates run £2.50–£5.00 per pallet per week depending on region and building spec. A standard UK pallet space assumes roughly 1.2m × 1.0m with a height limit (commonly 1.6–1.8m on racking) - oversize or non-stackable pallets may be billed as two positions, so ask.

Per bin per week. Small-parts storage: your units live in warehouse tote bins or shelf locations, charged per bin. Typical market range £0.75–£1.50 per bin per week. Bins suit small, pickable SKUs - phone accessories, cosmetics, supplements - where a whole pallet position would be mostly air.

Per cubic metre. You're charged for volume rather than a position. Typical market range is £1.25–£2.50 per m³ per week, or £8–£15 a month. Cubic pricing suits awkward stock that doesn't palletise neatly - long items, irregular cartons, loose bulky goods - and quantities that fall between bin-scale and pallet-scale.

The question nobody asks about cubic pricing: volume of what? The goods, or the space allocated to them? Product volume runs about two thirds of real occupancy once you allow for overhang, unstackable cartons and an aisle to reach the stock. So the same warehouse can honestly quote £13 or £20 per cubic metre for identical service depending on which it measures. Always ask.

Which model wins for which stock

The crossover arithmetic, at mid-market rates of £3.50 a pallet-week and £1.75 per m³-week:

• A full pallet is roughly 1.7–1.9 m³ of usable volume, which costs £2.98–£3.33 by the cubic metre against £3.50 for the position. For genuinely full pallets the models converge and pallet pricing wins on simplicity.
• A half-full pallet still costs the full £3.50 as a position but about £1.60 by volume. Partial pallets are where cubic pricing earns its keep.
• A bin holds perhaps 0.05–0.1 m³. Thirty small SKUs across 30 bins cost £27 a week on bins - but would sprawl across several pallet positions if palletised by SKU, costing more and picking slower.

| Stock profile | Best model | Why | | --- | --- | --- | | Full pallets of one SKU, slow-turning | Pallet | Dense, simple, cheap per unit | | Many small SKUs, active picking | Bin | Pay only for occupied bins; fast picks | | Partial pallets, shrinking stock | Cubic metre | Charge falls as stock sells down | | Long/awkward items | Cubic metre | Doesn't fit pallet or bin logic |

The best 3PLs mix models per client - reserve pallets for bulk, bins for pick faces - and replenish bins from pallets as stock sells. If a provider forces everything into one model, ask why.

The details that change the bill

Billing granularity. Weekly billing is standard; some providers bill by the month, which rounds against you when stock leaves mid-month. Also ask when billing starts (day of arrival, or after a free receiving window?) and whether a part-week is billed as a full week.

Shrinking stock. Under pallet billing, does your charge drop as pallets are consumed? A good 3PL consolidates two half-empty pallets into one and bills one position; a lazy one bills the footprint your stock had on arrival. This single behaviour can be worth 20–30% of a storage bill over a season.

Minimums and included storage. Some fulfilment-focused 3PLs include a storage allowance per SKU or waive storage on fast-turning stock; others have storage minimums. Factor it into the comparison.

Amazon as your comparison point. For FBA sellers, the alternative to 3PL storage is often Amazon's own. Amazon's monthly storage fees look competitive per cubic foot in off-peak months - but they rise sharply in Q4, and long-term surcharges on aged stock are severe (rates change; check the current fee schedule). The standard play is holding bulk stock at a 3PL and drip-feeding FBA a few weeks of cover at a time. The 3PL storage cost is usually far less than the Amazon surcharges and capacity headaches it avoids.

A worked example

A seller imports 5,000 units (10 full pallets) of a product selling 500 units/week, drip-feeding FBA weekly:

• Week 1: 10 pallets at £3.50 = £35.
• Stock falls by roughly a pallet a week as shipments leave; with consolidation, week 5 bills about 6 pallets (£21) and week 10 about one.
• Total storage over the 10-week sell-through: roughly £190 - about 3.8p per unit.

Compare that to the same stock sitting inside FBA for ten weeks through a Q4 rate period, plus the capacity-limit risk, and the buffer-warehouse model usually justifies itself before you even count the flexibility.

Questions to ask any provider

1. Which models do you offer, and can my account mix them?
2. What are the pallet height/weight limits before one pallet bills as two?
3. Do you consolidate partial pallets, and is that automatic?
4. When does billing start and stop, and is it pro-rated?
5. Can I see my current storage footprint and charges live, not at month end?

How Oakmont handles it

We offer one model, which by the standard of this article's own advice deserves an explanation.

Storage is free for the first 30 days of every delivery, then £20 per cubic metre per month - £4.62 a week - on the measured volume of the goods: your products' own package dimensions times the units we're holding. Nothing is billed in a month it comes to under £5.

We used to quote all three models, and dropped them for two reasons. The first is that offering a choice means the answer to "what will storage cost me?" is "it depends which format we put it in", which is not an answer. The second is that the three rates weren't equivalent: a pallet worked out around £6.50 per cubic metre per month against a £20 headline, so any client who noticed would ask for pallets and any client who didn't would overpay for identical service. A rate card where the informed customer pays a third of what the trusting one pays is a badly designed rate card.

To be straight about the measurement, since we told you to ask: £20 is per cubic metre of product, not of shelf, which is roughly equivalent to £13 per cubic metre of allocated space. It sits under Amazon's own off-peak storage fee and well under their Q4 rate, which for an FBA seller is the comparison that actually decides anything.

The free 30 days are doing most of the work here. The normal flow - receive, prep, ship - finishes inside it, so most clients never see a storage charge at all. It exists to put a visible price on stock that genuinely sits, and the charge falls as stock sells down because it's measured on what's actually in the building. Every week's charge lands in the portal's billing ledger against the cubic metres it was calculated on, next to live inventory, and there are no minimum commitments: stock in, stock out, month-to-month.