Choosing a 3PL is choosing a long-term operations partner. Before you commit, these ten questions separate a true full-service partner from a plain warehouse.
Ask about the essentials
- How close are you to the LA and Long Beach ports?
- Do you own your fleet or broker it?
- Do you offer ambient, refrigerated, and frozen storage?
- Are you USDA FSIS compliant?
- How do I see my inventory in real time?
Then dig into fit
- How is storage billed — and can it flex seasonally?
- What are your order cutoffs and delivery speeds?
- Do you integrate with Shopify and Amazon?
- How do you handle returns?
- Who is my point of contact?
The pattern to look for
The best answers point to one partner handling the whole chain — drayage, storage, cold chain, and fulfillment — from a single port-adjacent facility in Commerce, CA.
