We do not have a Miami warehouse. Our only building is in Sanford, 251 road miles north, and every order we ship leaves from there.
That leaves one honest reason for a Miami brand to use us, and it is money. Warehouse space in Miami-Dade asks $15.73 a square foot against $9.52 in Orlando, and closer to $17 in the corridors where a Miami 3PL would actually sit. What follows is what that gap could mean for your fulfillment costs, what the 251 miles costs you in exchange, and the four cases where a Miami 3PL beats us and you should hire one instead.
Industrial space in Miami-Dade asked $15.73 per square foot on a triple-net basis in the second quarter of 2026, against $9.52 in Orlando. That is about 65% more for the same square foot, measured the same way, in the same report.
That gap is not a quirk of one quarter. It has held for at least four straight quarters and ran as high as 82% in late 2025. It has narrowed over the past year as Miami rents eased and Orlando's firmed, which is worth saying plainly rather than quoting the widest number and hoping you do not check.
It is also worse where a Miami 3PL would actually sit. The county-wide average includes a lot of space nobody would fulfil orders from.
| Market | Q2 2026 asking rent / sq ft | vs Orlando |
|---|---|---|
| Airport West | $17.95 | +89% |
| Hialeah | $17.14 | +80% |
| Airport North / Medley | $16.95 | +78% |
| Miami-Dade, county average | $15.73 | +65% |
| Orlando | $9.52 | baseline |
And there is less of it. Miami-Dade industrial vacancy sat at 6.3% in Q2 2026 against Orlando's 8.4%, and just 2.8% in Hialeah. A tighter market means less space, less choice, and less room to negotiate on anything.
Source: Cushman & Wakefield, U.S. Industrial MarketBeat, Q2 2026, published 17 July 2026, and the accompanying Miami market report. Rents are triple net; taxes, insurance and common area maintenance are additional.
None of that is an argument against Miami. It is an argument about where your inventory should physically sit, which is a different question from where your business is.
Fair objection: you would not be signing a lease, so why does a landlord's asking rent matter to you?
Because it is the largest single input into the storage line on any 3PL's bill. A fulfillment provider pays rent by the square foot and recovers it from you by the pallet or the bin. When their rent is 65% higher, that has to surface somewhere, and it surfaces in storage rates, in minimums, or in both. It is the one cost in fulfillment that is set almost entirely by geography rather than by how well the warehouse is run.
The other three parts of a fulfillment bill, receiving, pick and pack, and shipping, are much less sensitive to where the building sits. How our pricing is structured walks through all four.
Two hundred and fifty-one miles is roughly four and a half hours each way. Be realistic about what that means.
At this distance, inbound inventory becomes a freight decision. Factor transport cost and shipment frequency into your provider comparison.
You keep the thing that actually matters at distance, which is that there is one building, one team, and a named person who knows your account. Read about our Sanford fulfillment center. The reason most brands end up unhappy with a national platform is not the mileage. It is that nobody answers, and the person who eventually does has never seen your product. That failure has nothing to do with 251 miles.
And your customers do not notice the difference. Carrier zones are set by the distance from the warehouse to the buyer, not to you. For a Miami brand selling nationally, or across Florida and the Southeast, a Central Florida origin is frequently the better position anyway, because Sanford sits on the I‑4 spine rather than at the bottom of the peninsula.
Port Miami moved 1,115,058 TEUs in fiscal year 2025, its eleventh consecutive year above one million. A TEU is one twenty-foot container, so that is a lot of Florida brands bringing goods in through Miami.
If that is you, the change is one drayage leg, meaning one truck move from the port. Your container clears at Port Miami and runs up to Sanford instead of into a Hialeah warehouse. Tell us who handles your forwarding and we will coordinate the hand-off with them. From there every outbound order ships from the middle of the state rather than the far south end of it, and you are paying Central Florida rates on the storage rather than South Florida ones.
Worth knowing that Port Canaveral is 66 miles from our dock, Port Tampa Bay about 106 and JAXPORT roughly 125. If you ever change entry ports, the warehouse does not have to move.
Source: Port Miami, Miami-Dade County, December 2025.
Four cases, and we would rather name them than have you discover them after signing.
If none of those describe you, the cost argument above is worth taking seriously. And if you are somewhere in between, which most brands are, that is the useful conversation.
Send us your destination ZIPs and your current fulfillment costs. We will run the zone and cost comparison and tell you honestly which way it falls, including when it falls against us. Get a free quote.
Miami's wholesale trade still runs through recognisable addresses: the Seybold Building on NE 1st Street, ten floors of jewellers in the middle of downtown, and the warehouse corridors out through Hialeah, Medley and Doral. The categories we see most from this market:
High-value, low-bulk goods are the clearest case for moving inventory out of South Florida. When your product is small and expensive, warehouse rent per square foot matters more than proximity to any particular city, because you are paying for space and not for miles.
Before choosing a fulfillment provider, discuss your products, order volume and handling requirements with our team.
Address, hours and directions are on the Sanford fulfillment center page, along with questions worth reviewing when evaluating a 3PL. Contact our team to discuss your fulfillment needs and request a quote.
For the full service list, how pricing is structured and what switching involves, see the Florida order fulfillment page, plus third-party logistics services, shipping optimization and returns and reverse logistics.
No. We have one warehouse, in Sanford, 251 road miles north of Miami, and every order ships from it. We would rather say that on the first line than have you find out on a call.
Cost, mostly. Industrial space in Miami-Dade asked $15.73 per square foot in Q2 2026 against $9.52 in Orlando, and more like $17 in the warehouse corridors where a Miami 3PL would actually sit. If your product is small and valuable, you are paying for square footage rather than for miles, and the square footage is much cheaper 250 miles north.
Shipping from Central Florida does not necessarily mean slower delivery to South Florida. Transit times may be the same, depending on the carrier, service and destination ZIP. Send us your destination ZIPs so we can compare the available services.
Yes, with one drayage leg from the port up to Sanford. After that your storage is at Central Florida rates and your outbound orders ship from the middle of the state.
Contact our team with your order volume, SKU count and fulfillment requirements. We can discuss your needs and provide a quote.
If your customers are concentrated in South Florida, if you export to Latin America or the Caribbean, if you need to be in the building regularly, or if your volume justifies splitting inventory across several warehouses. In those cases a local provider or a national network will beat us.
It depends on order volume, SKU count, storage footprint and any value-added work such as kitting. The four-part pricing structure is on the Florida page. Send us your numbers and we will come back with a rate card.
Send your order volume, SKU count and where your parcels actually go. We will run the zone and cost comparison and tell you honestly if a South Florida provider is the better answer.
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