Sellers outside the Southeast tend to ask about the region for one of two reasons: they're priced out of Northeast or West Coast warehouse space, or they've noticed a growing share of their orders shipping to Georgia, the Carolinas, Florida, and Tennessee and want a warehouse closer to that demand. Both are good reasons. But "the Southeast" isn't one warehouse. It's a region with real differences in port access, product specialization, and transit reach depending on which 3PL and which city you land in. Here's a straight look at five operators with real Southeast footprints, what each is actually built for, and the honest trade-off the region carries against a more central US location.
Five 3PLs worth evaluating in the Southeast: Simple Distribution (Selmer, TN) for brands that want fulfillment and customer service run by the same team, and a location that softens the region's West Coast penalty; Port City Logistics (Savannah, GA) for import-heavy brands that want drayage and warehousing under one roof; Porter Logistics (Atlanta and Savannah, GA) for hazmat, food, and other regulated products; Kanban Logistics (Rocky Mount, NC) for food and pharma shippers and for importers who want foreign trade zone duty deferral; and Selery Fulfillment (Hickory, NC plus Orlando, FL and Carrollton, TX) for multi-node coverage without juggling separate vendors. The Southeast reaches the eastern half of the country in 1 to 2 days by ground but adds days to West Coast delivery, so it's the strongest fit for businesses whose order volume skews east of the Mississippi.
Why Businesses Are Looking at the Southeast
Three factors are driving the interest, and they compound each other. The Port of Savannah is one of the busiest container ports in the country, so brands importing goods can move inventory from ship to warehouse without trucking it hundreds of miles inland first. The interstate network, I-75, I-85, I-40, and I-95, connects the region directly to the Northeast, the Midwest, and Florida, which keeps ground transit competitive across a large share of the US population. And warehouse rent and warehouse labor both run below Northeast and West Coast rates, which shows up directly in what a 3PL actually costs once you compare quotes.
Southeast vs. a Truly Central US Location
The Southeast is not the geographic center of the country, and that matters more than most sellers expect until they run the numbers. A hub in Georgia or the Carolinas reaches the eastern half of the US fastest, but it adds a day or two to West Coast ground shipments compared to a warehouse nearer the true center, like the Mid-South. If your order map is concentrated east of the Mississippi, that gap barely matters. If a meaningful share of your customers are in California, Washington, or Arizona, it's worth comparing quotes from both ends of the region before signing.
That spread is the single most useful thing to understand about the Southeast, because the region is wide enough that where you land inside it changes your transit map. Savannah and Atlanta sit at the eastern end, closest to the ports and to Florida. Western Tennessee sits roughly 400 miles further inland, which trades a little East Coast speed for a shorter run west. Neither end is universally correct.
The Southeast wins on port access and import logistics. A more central location wins on balanced national reach. The right call depends on where your orders actually ship, not on which region sounds more strategic on paper. If you're weighing operators across the whole country rather than one region, our list of the best 3PL companies in the United States starts from that same question: one well-placed warehouse, or a network.
5 3PLs With Real Southeast Warehouse Footprints
These are five 3PLs that actually operate warehouses in the region, each built around a different kind of business. None of them is the right fit for every seller, which is the point: match the specialization to what you actually ship before you request a quote.
| Operator | Where | Footprint | Best for | Certifications and extras |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simple Distribution | Selmer, TN (92 miles east of Memphis) | Owner-operated warehouse in west Tennessee | Fulfillment plus customer service from one team; order maps that include the West | 17 years operating; 99.7% order accuracy; 4.8/5 TrustPilot across 22,000+ reviews; Amazon FBA prep |
| Port City Logistics | Savannah, GA (Pooler and Port Wentworth) | About 3.5 million sq ft across the region | Import-heavy brands landing containers at Savannah | Own drayage fleet; 3PL operations since 2001 |
| Porter Logistics | Atlanta and Savannah, GA | About 750,000 sq ft in Atlanta plus 230,000+ sq ft in Savannah | Hazmat, food and beverage, nutraceutical, pharma | HAZMAT-certified; AIB and SQF; frozen through ambient |
| Kanban Logistics | Rocky Mount and Tarboro, NC | About 1.5 million sq ft in eastern North Carolina | Food and pharma shippers; importers deferring duty | Foreign trade zone; AIB food-grade; ISO 9001, AS9100, C-TPAT; rail siding |
| Selery Fulfillment | Hickory, NC; Orlando, FL; Carrollton, TX | About 795,000 sq ft across six warehouses | Coast-to-coast order maps under one contract | Multi-node network across three states |
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Simple Distribution, Selmer, Tennessee
Two things separate Simple Distribution from the rest of this list. The first is position: Selmer sits in western Tennessee, at the inland edge of the Southeast, which keeps the region's warehouse rent and labor advantage while cutting roughly a day off West Coast ground compared with the Georgia and Carolina hubs here. That directly softens the trade-off described above, which is the main reason sellers rule the region out. The second is scope: customer service runs as a core service alongside fulfillment, inventory management, warehouse consulting, and Amazon FBA prep, so order problems and the customer conversation about them are handled by the same team rather than split across two vendors. The numbers behind that are 17 years operating, 99.7% order accuracy, $1.5 to $2 million in orders shipped monthly, and a 4.8 out of 5 TrustPilot rating across more than 22,000 reviews. Where it isn't the right answer: ocean containers that need drayage off the dock at Savannah, hazmat and certified food-grade storage, foreign trade zone duty deferral, and coast-to-coast multi-node coverage. Each of those has a better home in the four entries below.
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Port City Logistics, Savannah, Georgia (Port of Savannah)
Port City has been running 3PL operations out of Savannah since 2001 and has grown to roughly 3.5 million square feet across the region, with facilities in Pooler and Port Wentworth sitting minutes from the terminal, and it runs its own drayage rather than brokering it out. That means it can pull a container off the dock and into its own warehouse without a separate trucking handoff, which is a real advantage for import-heavy brands in fashion, footwear, home goods, or electronics, where a delay at the port-to-warehouse handoff is one of the most common causes of a late inbound shipment. If most of your inventory arrives by sea through Savannah, start here.
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Porter Logistics, Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia
Porter runs roughly 750,000 square feet of HAZMAT-certified space in Atlanta plus another 230,000-plus square feet of HAZMAT and food-grade certified space near the Port of Savannah, and its warehouses carry AIB and SQF certification across the full temperature range from frozen through ambient. Regulated chemical, food and beverage, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical handling at both the inland and the port end of Georgia is not something a general ecommerce 3PL can improvise, because the storage rules and the paperwork behind them are what an audit actually looks at. If your product carries those rules, this is the operator on the list built for it, and none of the others are set up to stand in.
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Kanban Logistics, Rocky Mount and Tarboro, North Carolina
Kanban runs about 1.5 million square feet in eastern North Carolina, including temperature-controlled, AIB-certified food-grade space with its own rail siding, and it operates the only activated general-purpose foreign trade zone in that part of the state. The trade zone is the part worth understanding: inventory can sit inside it without duty being paid until it actually ships, which matters more than it used to now that tariff exposure is a live line item for importers. Add ISO 9001, AS9100, and C-TPAT certification and it's the strongest fit here for food, pharmaceutical, and aerospace-adjacent shippers who need a documented quality regime, with I-95 and I-40 both minutes away for the East Coast run.
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Selery Fulfillment, Hickory, NC, with nodes in Orlando, FL and Carrollton, TX
Selery runs six warehouses totaling roughly 795,000 square feet, including its Hickory, North Carolina and Orlando, Florida locations alongside a Texas hub. For a brand that wants Southeast coverage plus a foothold further west without managing two separate 3PL contracts, a multi-node provider shortens the average shipping zone across more of the country under a single relationship. That's the cleanest answer on this list if your orders are genuinely split coast to coast.
One that didn't make the five, and is still worth a call: ITB Fulfillment in Covington, Georgia, roughly 160,000 square feet in the Atlanta metro, with a strong WMS and OMS stack serving both direct-to-consumer and B2B. It's a good fit for a mid-size brand that wants systems integration and Atlanta interstate access. It's off the five mainly because its profile overlaps closely with operators already listed rather than covering a situation none of them do.
How to Pick the Right One (Or Decide the Region Isn't It)
Regulated goods, food, beverage, supplements, chemicals, or pharma, point toward a certified operator like Porter or Kanban. General parcel-friendly ecommerce fits the rest of the list. Genuinely oversized or heavy freight has no specialist on this list, so look outside it.
If a meaningful share of your inventory arrives by ocean container through Savannah, a port-adjacent operator with its own drayage, like Port City, removes a coordination step most other 3PLs can't. If duty is a large line item, price a foreign trade zone operator like Kanban alongside it.
Map your last 90 days of orders by state. If the East Coast and near Midwest dominate, the eastern end of the region fits well. If West Coast orders are a large share, weigh an inland Tennessee quote or a second node against a Georgia one.
Decide whether you want fulfillment only, or fulfillment plus customer service and inventory work under one roof. Splitting them across vendors is workable but adds a handoff every time an order goes wrong.
Whichever provider looks like the best fit on paper, run the same vetting process you'd use for any 3PL, and run it on every provider here: ask for accuracy and on-time ship rate, get a full line-item quote instead of just a pick fee, and read the contract terms closely before committing volume. If you haven't gone through that process yet, our guide to vetting a 3PL covers the questions worth asking every finalist on your list, and what a 3PL quote actually looks like breaks down the line items so you can compare apples to apples.
Frequently Asked Questions
Three things: port access, highway infrastructure, and cost. The Port of Savannah is one of the busiest container ports in the country, which matters if you import inventory. Interstates 75, 85, 40, and 95 run through the region and connect it directly to the Northeast, Midwest, and Florida. And warehouse rent and warehouse labor both run cheaper in the Southeast than in the Northeast or on the West Coast, which shows up directly in your per-order fulfillment cost.
From a hub in Georgia, North Carolina, or Tennessee, standard ground service typically reaches the rest of the Southeast, the Mid-Atlantic, and much of the Midwest in 1 to 2 days: Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Kentucky, and parts of Ohio and Indiana most commonly. The Northeast and Texas usually run 2 to 3 days. The West Coast is the outlier at 4 to 5 days ground from most Southeast origin points, which is the main trade-off to weigh against the region's other advantages.
Ask for the numbers in writing, dated within the last 90 days: order accuracy rate, on-time ship rate, and receiving turnaround. Then ask how each one is measured, because the definitions vary. Accuracy counted per line item is a stricter number than accuracy counted per order, and on-time ship means nothing without the order cutoff time attached to it. Follow that with two current client references shipping a product profile close to yours, and a full line-item quote rather than a pick fee on its own. Operators who track these numbers hand them over without hesitation. Ones that answer with testimonials instead usually aren't measuring.
A hub in Georgia or the Carolinas reaches the eastern half of the country fastest but adds a day or two to West Coast ground shipments compared to a warehouse nearer the geographic center of the US, such as the Mid-South. If your order volume is concentrated east of the Mississippi, the difference barely matters. If your customer base is spread coast to coast, a more central location shortens the average transit time across your whole map instead of just one side of it. Western Tennessee sits between the two, which is why it appears on this list at all.
Porter Logistics, headquartered in Atlanta with a second facility near the Port of Savannah, runs HAZMAT-certified warehouse space at both ends of Georgia: roughly 750,000 square feet in Atlanta and over 230,000 square feet in Savannah, with AIB and SQF food-grade certification across the temperature range from frozen through ambient. Chemical, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical products carry storage and documentation rules a general ecommerce 3PL isn't set up to meet, so an operator already audited against those standards is the safer choice. For a product carrying those rules, that audited footprint matters more than anything else on this list.
Kanban Logistics, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, runs AIB-certified, temperature-controlled food-grade space and builds its inbound operation around food and pharmaceutical shippers, backed by ISO 9001 and AS9100 quality certification. Porter Logistics is the other certified option on this list, with AIB and SQF certification and the full temperature range from frozen through ambient at its Atlanta and Savannah facilities. Either way, working with a 3PL that already holds the certification saves you an audit cycle and reduces the risk of a shipment getting flagged.
Port City Logistics has operated out of Savannah since 2001 and has grown to roughly 3.5 million square feet across the region, with facilities in Pooler and Port Wentworth minutes from the terminal and its own drayage operation. A container can move from the dock into its own warehouse without handing off to a third-party trucking company, which for import-heavy brands removes one of the most common causes of a late inbound shipment. Kanban Logistics is worth a call for the same reason from a different angle: it operates the only activated general-purpose foreign trade zone in eastern North Carolina, so duty can be deferred on inventory that hasn't shipped yet.
Pricing follows the same structure as any 3PL: a per-pallet or per-bin storage fee, a per-order pick and pack fee, and pass-through shipping. Because Southeast warehouse rent and labor run below Northeast and West Coast rates, quotes from the region are often modestly lower on the storage and labor-driven line items, though shipping cost still depends on where your customers actually are, not where your warehouse sits.
Probably not as your only warehouse. A Southeast-only setup adds 4 to 5 days of ground transit to West Coast orders, which either means slower delivery or a higher expedited shipping bill to compensate. If West Coast volume is a meaningful share of your orders, either add a West Coast node alongside a Southeast one, or choose a more central location that shortens the average transit time across the whole country instead of optimizing for one side of it. A second node also means two sets of minimums, two integrations, and two relationships to manage, so weigh that complexity before adding one.
Start with four questions: does your product require food-grade, hazmat, or other compliance certification, how much of your inventory arrives by ocean container, would deferring import duty change your cash flow, and where do your orders actually ship. Certification requirements point to a certified operator, heavy import volume points to a port-adjacent one with its own drayage, and duty-heavy inventory points to a foreign trade zone operator. From there, match the answer to the 3PL built for that profile rather than picking on price alone, and ask each finalist for their accuracy rate, on-time ship rate, and a full line-item quote before comparing them side by side.
Selery Fulfillment is the only one of the five with a warehouse inside Florida, at its Orlando node, which puts central and south Florida on a one-day ground run. For north Florida, the Savannah operators are nearly as close: Port City's and Porter's Savannah facilities sit about 140 miles up I-95 from Jacksonville, so Jacksonville and northeast Florida are typically one day by ground from either. From western Tennessee, most of Florida runs two days by ground and south Florida can be three, so a Florida-heavy order map favors the Georgia or Orlando end of this list.
None of the five is headquartered in South Carolina, but two of them sit close enough that it rarely matters. Port City's Port Wentworth facilities are on the Savannah River, minutes from the South Carolina line, which makes it the nearest option for the Lowcountry and for Charleston-area importers who would rather land containers at Savannah. Selery's Hickory, North Carolina warehouse is about an hour from the South Carolina line on the Upstate side. In practice, most of South Carolina is one day by ground from the Georgia and North Carolina operators on this list, and typically two from Simple Distribution in west Tennessee.
Simple Distribution. Selmer, Tennessee sits 19 miles from Corinth, Mississippi, just over the state line, and about 180 miles from Birmingham, so north Mississippi, the Memphis metro, and north Alabama are a one-day ground run and the rest of both states is typically two. For a business on the eastern side of Alabama, Porter's Atlanta warehouses are the closer option, about an hour from the Alabama line on I-20, with hazmat and food-grade certification if the product needs it. No operator on this list has a facility inside Alabama or Mississippi, so the choice comes down to which side of the two states your orders and your inbound freight favor.
Simple Distribution in Selmer is about 92 miles east of Memphis, close enough that Memphis-metro sellers get a one-day ground run and an easy drive for a site visit, without paying Memphis metro rent and labor rates. That position is why a small town appears on a Southeast list at all: it keeps the region's cost advantage while sitting far enough west to shorten the run to Texas and the West Coast. Nashville is also a one-day ground run from Selmer and one to two days from the Georgia and Carolina hubs. None of the other four operators has a Tennessee facility.
Not sure the Southeast is the right region at all?
Tell us your order map and product mix and we'll give you a straight read: whether Simple Distribution fits, whether one of the other four on this list fits better, or whether the Southeast is the wrong region for you entirely. No pitch.