We do not have a Broward warehouse. Our only building is in Sanford, 229 road miles north, and every order we ship leaves from there.
So this page is not going to argue that we are closer, because we are not. It is going to argue two things worth weighing before you sign with anyone. Fort Lauderdale is a marine town, and marine freight breaks in ways most fulfillment providers only discover on your invoice. And warehouse space in Broward is the tightest and most expensive in Florida, which shows up on your storage line whatever you sell and whoever you hire. Further down there is a straight comparison with the largest local provider, and the four cases where you should hire locally instead of us.
Broward County's recreational marine industry generated $9.957 billion in gross output, more than half of the three-county South Florida region's total. That figure comes from the most recent full economic study of the industry, which uses 2022 data and was published in February 2023 by Thomas J. Murray & Associates for the Marine Industries Association of South Florida.
Source: Recent Growth and Economic Impact of the Recreational Marine Industry in Southeast Florida's Tri-County Region, Thomas J. Murray & Associates, February 2023, using 2022 data. The $9.957 billion figure is Broward County alone; the three-county total is higher.
If you sell into that world, whether it is hardware, electronics, canvas, apparel, safety gear or parts, you already know the shipping is not normal. Marine goods tend to be some combination of heavy, oddly shaped, expensive and impossible to fit in a standard carton. A stainless fitting worth four hundred dollars weighs almost nothing. A length of rigging is six feet long and cannot bend. A chartplotter is fragile, valuable and dimensionally awkward.
Three things that go wrong, and what handling them properly looks like:
If you do not sell marine goods, the same three problems turn up wherever the catalogue is awkward: long items, heavy items, and wholesale orders alongside direct-to-consumer orders. Broward has plenty of that outside the marine cluster. And the warehouse-market argument below applies to every brand in the county regardless of what is in the carton.
The Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show runs its 67th edition from 28 October to 1 November 2026 across seven waterfront venues. It is owned by the Marine Industries Association of South Florida and produced by Informa Markets, and the organisers describe it as the largest in-water boat show in the world.
The 2024 edition generated $1.778 billion in economic output across Florida and drew nearly 100,000 visitors, on the same Murray study methodology.
Source: Thomas J. Murray & Associates for the Marine Industries Association of South Florida, February 2025, covering the 2024 edition.
Operationally that means a compressed demand spike. Trade orders written on the dock in late October need filling in November, booth stock has to go out and come back, and sample kits often ship directly from the show floor. Brands who tell their fulfillment provider the dates in advance get inventory staged for it. Brands who do not spend November apologising to dealers.
If you exhibit, tell us the show and the dates. We will stage inventory ahead of it and handle booth stock going out and coming back. Send us your show dates.
If you are weighing whether to lease space in Broward rather than outsource, the scarcity is a bigger problem than the price.
Fort Lauderdale industrial vacancy sat at 5.4% in the second quarter of 2026. That is the tightest of any Florida market in Cushman & Wakefield's national survey, and below the 6.9% national rate. Miami was 6.3%, Orlando 8.4%. How those numbers look from Miami-Dade is a slightly different argument. A market that tight means less space, less choice, and very little room to negotiate.
It is also the most expensive. Asking rent was $17.67 per square foot on a triple-net basis, the highest of the eight Florida markets in that survey, against $9.52 in Orlando.
The more useful number is the direction of travel. Over the past four quarters the spread between Fort Lauderdale and Orlando has widened, and while it dipped slightly at the start of that run it has moved decisively the other way since.
| Quarter | Fort Lauderdale minus Orlando, per sq ft |
|---|---|
| Q2 2025 | $7.12 |
| Q3 2025 | $7.02 |
| Q4 2025 | $7.78 |
| Q2 2026 | $8.15 |
Source: Cushman & Wakefield, U.S. Industrial MarketBeat, Q2 2026 and the corresponding Q3 2025 and Q4 2025 releases. Rents are triple net; taxes, insurance and common area maintenance are additional. Cushman & Wakefield tracks eight Florida markets and does not cover Fort Myers, Naples or Sarasota.
You would not be signing the lease, so why does it matter? Because of what 5.4% vacancy does to a provider at renewal. A landlord with almost no empty space has no reason to move on price, and a 3PL with no alternative building to move to has no position to argue from. That is a different problem from simply paying a high rent: it means the storage rate you are quoted today sits on ground that can move against your provider next year, and there is very little they can do about it.
Storage is one of four parts of a fulfillment bill, and it is the one most exposed to where the building sits. What Florida fulfillment actually costs breaks down all four.
Port Everglades moved a record 1,167,552 TEUs in fiscal year 2025, a TEU being one twenty-foot container. It is one of the busiest container ports in the state and a lot of South Florida brands bring goods in through it.
Using us puts one truck move between the port and the warehouse. Your box clears at Port Everglades and runs north rather than a few miles west into Broward, and we will coordinate the hand-off with whoever handles your forwarding. What changes after that is the storage rate, not the service.
Source: Port Everglades, December 2025.
ShipMonk is headquartered at 201 NW 22nd Avenue in Fort Lauderdale and runs fulfillment centres across the United States, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. For a brand that is scaling fast and shipping nationally or internationally, that network is a real advantage and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
The differences worth weighing are structural rather than competitive:
If you are somewhere in between, which most brands are, that is the useful conversation.
Two hundred and twenty-nine miles is about four hours each way. Contact our team to discuss your fulfillment requirements and request a quote.
Address, hours and directions are on the Sanford fulfillment center page, along with questions to help evaluate a 3PL. The Florida page covers the full service list, pricing structure and what switching involves, plus third-party logistics services, shipping optimization and returns and reverse logistics.
No. We have one warehouse, in Sanford, 229 road miles north, and every order ships from it. There are capable providers based in Broward, and further down this page there is a straight comparison plus the cases where hiring one of them is the better call.
Two reasons. Warehouse space in Fort Lauderdale is the tightest and most expensive in Florida, at 5.4% vacancy and $17.67 per square foot against Orlando's $9.52, and that pressure surfaces in what any local provider has to charge for storage. And if your catalogue is marine, we handle the dimensional-weight and oversize problems that come with it rather than discovering them on your invoice.
Yes. Tell us the dates and we stage for the spike. Booth stock can go out and come back, and post-show trade orders pick from the same inventory pool as your direct-to-consumer volume. The 2026 show runs 28 October to 1 November.
Send us the dimensions and weights for your largest SKUs and we will tell you honestly which are parcel, which are freight, and which sit awkwardly between the two. That answer should come before you sign, not after.
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. Parcel and freight orders need separate comparisons. Please send us the destinations and the dimensions, along with item weights, so we can assess the options for your orders.
Yes, with one drayage leg from the port up to Sanford. After that your storage is at Central Florida rates.
The same four parts as anywhere: receiving, storage, pick and pack, and shipping. What differs here is that oversize and freight-class items do not price like parcel goods, so a catalogue with long or heavy SKUs needs quoting on its actual dimensions rather than on an average order. The structure is explained on the Florida order fulfillment page. Send us your numbers and we will come back with a rate card.
They run a multi-node network across several countries; we run one building. If your volume justifies splitting inventory across regions, their network beats us. If you would rather deal with one team who has seen your product, that is the trade. Ask both of us for the minimum, the setup fee and the contract length in writing and compare the answers.
Send your order volume, SKU count and where your parcels actually go. If you have the dimensions and weight of your three largest SKUs to hand, include them and we will tell you which are parcel and which are freight before you sign anything. We will come back with real pricing and an honest read, including if a Broward provider is the better answer.
Get a Free Quote