FBA prep USA: the 2026 landscape.
Verified US FBA prep centers grouped by coast, port proximity, and tax-free state strategy. With Amazon's in-house FBA prep service ended (Supply Chain Dive, 2026), the entire third-party network is now load-bearing. This page is the canonical map.
Honest scope: 300 verified US centers as of 2026-09-14, published only after clearing the 4-point operator standard. The complete typed list, filterable by state and price, is the FBA prep center list. UK, Germany, and Canada are open for applications; international centers publish only after the same standard clears in each region.
The US prep landscape by coast.
Pick your prep center by what is closest to the right Amazon fulfillment center, not what is closest to you. Amazon's Inbound Placement Service Fee (IPSF) charges sellers when their shipments need redistribution across FCs. A prep center near the East Coast FC cluster reduces IPSF for East Coast demand; West Coast for West Coast demand. The IPSF delta on a national shipment can exceed $0.30 per unit.
East Coast
Highest Amazon FC density in the US. Atlanta is the Southeast routing anchor. Savannah is the port-of-entry for China inbound destined east of the Mississippi. NJ/PA cluster serves the Northeast metro.
- Atlanta, Savannah, New York, Miami
- Savannah (SAV), New York / New Jersey, Charleston
- ATL (Atlanta), EWR (Newark), PHL (Philadelphia), JFK8 (Staten Island)
Central
Dallas and Houston serve south-central FCs. Tennessee is a sleeper play for east-of-Rockies distribution. Michigan is a smaller hub but has working FBA prep capacity.
- Houston, Dallas, Memphis, Chicago
- Houston (HOU)
- DFW (Dallas), MEM (Memphis), ORD (Chicago)
West Coast
Highest concentration of mid-tier prep centers in the US. LA / Long Beach is the port-of-entry for the bulk of China-origin inbound. Ontario CA is the inland routing hub. Phoenix is hazmat-friendly.
- Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Reno
- Long Beach (LGB), Los Angeles (LAX)
- ONT (Ontario), LGB (Long Beach), PHX (Phoenix)
The five tax-free states.
New Hampshire, Oregon, Delaware, Montana, and Alaska have no statewide sales tax. Storing inventory in any of them avoids triggering sales-tax nexus in that specific state. Oregon and Delaware are the practically useful options given proximity to West Coast and East Coast Amazon FCs respectively.
Section 321 changes shifted demand to US prep.
In 2025, US Customs ended the Section 321 de minimis exemption for direct China imports. Shipments under $800 that previously cleared customs duty-free now require formal entry. The shift removed the structural advantage of China-direct fulfillment models.
Two consequences: first, China-origin inventory now benefits from consolidation at the container level (single customs entry vs many) instead of per-order imports. A US prep center is the natural consolidation point. Second, with Amazon's in-house FBA prep service ended on January 1, 2026 (Supply Chain Dive), every seller who previously relied on Amazon for prep now needs a US-based third-party prep center.
Net result: a US prep center is no longer optional for most FBA sellers operating in the US market. The question is which US prep center, not whether to use one.
6 recently verified.
Ordered by recency of last verification check, except that a Featured (paid) center is shown first and labeled. Stale and flagged listings appear on profile pages; archived listings keep their URL but are marked.
Tetris3PL
Tetris3PL is a direct-to-consumer fulfillment warehouse at 6255 N Hollywood Blvd, Suite 120, in Las Vegas, Nevada, operated by Tetris Fulfillment, LLC, a Nevada company formed in June 2024. Most of its work is D2C order fulfillment, with B2B shipments, cross-docking, storage and returns alongside an Amazon FBA prep line that has been on its site since September 2024. Prep covers FNSKU labeling, poly bagging with suffocation warnings, bubble wrap, bundling with sold-as-set labels, case packs and quality inspection. It publishes a full rate sheet: FNSKU labeling $0.70 per item, poly bagging with bag and warning $0.75, bubble wrap $1.00, bundles of up to three units $1.50 plus $0.50 per extra item, and re-boxing $2 plus materials. Pallet receiving is $10, pallet storage $35 a month and pallet forwarding $30. Cautions: there is a $1,000 minimum monthly spend, a $400 monthly account management fee and $100 a month per connected sales channel, and pallet storage carries a $15 monthly surcharge per pallet when an account ships fewer than 200 D2C orders a month (B2B accounts are quoted), so small prep batches will cost far more than the per-unit rates suggest. The company is about two years old and runs one warehouse; an Atlanta site is announced for 2027. Its customer case studies are unnamed, so we did not use them.
Ships A Lot
Ships A Lot is the current name of Dollar Fulfillment, an Idaho ecommerce fulfillment company that merged with Memphis-based Ships-a-Lot in 2023. The operating entity, Macek Consulting LLC, was registered in Idaho in December 2008. It lists three warehouses: 4391 W Hargrave Ave in Post Falls, Idaho, its registered address; 5755 FedEx Lane in Olive Branch, Mississippi, outside Memphis, its largest site; and 4340 N Lamb Blvd in Las Vegas. The square footages on its site run higher than property records and its own LinkedIn post, so treat them as the operator's figures. Most of its work is direct-to-consumer, marketplace, retail and subscription fulfillment. Its Amazon FBA prep section covers polybagging, bubble wrap, FNSKU labels and shipment plans, with inspection before inventory ships to Amazon, and the company states a 24 to 48 hour turnaround from receiving to shipment. The predecessor site described the same prep work in May 2024. Pricing is quote-based; no prep rates are published. Cautions: FBA prep is one of eight service lines at a DTC-first 3PL and the prep section runs four short paragraphs, so ask for a written prep rate card and confirm which warehouse will handle your inbound. Volume figures such as 5 million orders a year are the operator's own. The two homepage testimonials name generic-sounding companies, so we did not use them. The predecessor's Trustpilot profile (dollarfulfillment.com) shows 1.3 stars on 63 reviews, and the visible ones are mostly from shoppers of client brands rather than sellers; the BBB rates the business A+.
HermesLines
HermesLines is an ecommerce fulfillment warehouse in Cleveland, Ohio, operated by Logilines LLC, an Ohio company registered in December 2023. It works from Suite B at 5300 Tradex Parkway, a multi-tenant industrial building, and handles direct-to-consumer orders, pallet storage, and B2B and Amazon FBA prep. Its services page lists inbound inspection for damage and quantity discrepancies, labeling, carton building and pallet wrapping, with dispatch to Amazon fulfillment centers and retail distribution centers across the eastern US. Prep is billed as labor rather than per unit: $60 per hour, which its prep-cost article says is prorated to the minute, plus $10 per new pallet and $5 per stretch wrap, with no monthly order minimum. Its cost articles also list a platform fee from $14 a month in months inventory moves, which the pricing page does not show. Pallet receiving is $10 and storage starts at $15.99 per pallet per month. Its pricing page adds FNSKU labeling and polybagging, and its rate card adds carton and pallet shipping labels and packing lists. Cautions: this is a DTC-first 3PL and FBA prep shares one short section with B2B retail work. The operator asks sellers to supply current Amazon prep guidelines with every shipment, so agree in writing who owns compliance. Hourly billing makes per-unit cost hard to predict; ask for a time estimate on a sample batch. The site went live in August 2024. Until at least April 2026 its Amazon service was priced per pallet ($79.95 for one pallet); the hourly unit-level prep card dates from about May 2026.
Fulfillment Express
Fulfillment Express is a Los Angeles-area 3PL at 1502 Gage Rd in Montebello, California, near the Port of Los Angeles. It was incorporated in California in 1997 and now runs the fex3pl.com site, which replaced the fulfillmentexpress.com domain it has held since 2001. Its Amazon page covers bulk FBA shipments for both Seller Central and Vendor Central: ASIN or FNSKU unit labels from $0.20 per unit, FBA carton labels built to Amazon's carton weight and size rules, pallet labels and pallet building, plus Seller Fulfilled Prime and FBM order shipping. The core business is DTC and retail order fulfillment, including EDI and routing-guide work for big-box retailers, kit building, lot and serial number tracking and returns, with no monthly minimums. Pricing beyond the unit-label rate is quote-based. Cautions: the prep line is focused on labeling; the Amazon page does not list polybagging, bundling or inspection as FBA services, so confirm those if your products need them. The site says the company was founded in 1993, while the California corporation dates to 1997. No email address is published on the website, so contact is by phone or the web form.
Cims 3PL
Cims 3PL is a small ecommerce fulfillment warehouse in Richmond, Texas, in the Houston suburbs, run by CIMS 3PL LLC, a Texas company registered in May 2022. It publishes an FBA prep rate card: $1.25 per unit covers receiving and inspection, FNSKU labeling, polybagging and bubble wrap, with new FBA-compliant cartons at $4 each, carton labels at $2 each, and outbound loading to Amazon at $2 to $3 per box or $30 to $35 per pallet. Pallet storage is $30 a month and DTC order fulfillment runs $1.75 to $2.50 an order depending on monthly volume, with returns, kitting, bundling and subscription boxes also offered. The site lists one location. Cautions: the homepage quotes FBA prep at $1.50 per unit while the pricing page says $1.25, so confirm the rate in writing before shipping. The About page claims eight years of logistics services, but archived copies show this domain ran an online salt lamp store in 2018 and 2019, and the 3PL site first appears in January 2022. The website gives only 'Richmond, Texas' with no street address. Its client testimonials are signed with initials only, so we did not use them.
Borderworx Logistics
Borderworx Logistics is a cross-border 3PL and customs broker with warehouses on both sides of the Canada-US border: a facility it describes as over 110,000 sq ft at 6405 Inducon Drive West in Sanborn, New York, near Niagara Falls, which this listing covers, and one of over 52,000 sq ft at 2360 Cornwall Rd, Unit A, in Oakville, Ontario. Its Ontario corporation dates to 2006 and its New York LLC to 2008; the company says it started in 2003, the year its domain was registered. The FBA prep page describes receiving whole shipments, unpacking, labeling and repacking to Amazon's prep and label rules, bundling and quality checks, then sending stock to Amazon fulfillment centers in Canada or the US; the location pages add poly-bagging and case-pack prep. The rest of the business is customs brokerage, trade compliance, container freight station work, cross-border trucking on its own fleet, warehousing, and FBM and multichannel order fulfillment, which suits Canadian sellers moving stock into Amazon US. Pricing is quote-based; no prep rates are published. Cautions: the prep pages describe a three-step process with no turnaround times or rates, so ask for both in writing. The site's own figures conflict, more than 2,000,000 customs clearances on the homepage and more than 250,000 on the About page, so treat its counters as the operator's claims.
Common questions on US FBA prep.
What is an FBA prep center in the USA?
Do I need a US-based prep center if I sell on Amazon US?
Which US states have no sales tax on inventory?
Where are the largest Amazon fulfillment centers in the US?
How much does FBA prep cost per unit in the US?
Is it cheaper to use a Chinese prep center or a US one?
What changed with Section 321 and de minimis in 2025?
Which port is best for FBA imports: LA / Long Beach, Savannah, or NY / NJ?
Amazon FC directory
96 major US Amazon FCs and cross-docks grouped by region. Where your inbound actually lands.
Open the directory →
Amazon IXD directory
Six of the 57 US inbound cross-docks on Amazon's list, with the fulfillment centers in each one's metro.
Open the IXD list →
Tax-free states pillar
The 5 sales-tax-free states (NH/OR/DE/MT/AK) plus the full sales-tax-nexus argument for FBA inventory.
Read the pillar →
FBA prep coverage by state
Which states we have verified centers in right now, and what to do about the ones we do not.
View coverage →
What we track and verify
The live count of tracked entities, published centers, and the verification status behind each one.
Open the coverage report →
What FBA prep actually is
The plain-language definition, the work involved, and why Amazon sellers outsource it.
Read the primer →