Updated October 2026
Kibble, litter and crates are heavy to move, and a carton that's too big for them makes shipping cost more still. For most pet brands, freight decides the total more than anything else on the bill.
The main costs of pet product fulfillment are:
Freight is usually the one that moves the total. Storage stays smaller, because most of a pet catalog is shelf-stable and keeps in ambient space.
By The Fulfillment.com team
Few catalogs are as mixed as a pet brand's. Heavy bags of kibble and jugs of litter sit beside leashes that weigh almost nothing and treats stamped with a lot and a date. A pricing model built for small, even parcels gets that mix wrong from the first SKU, so each cost is worth looking at on its own.
Freight usually costs the most. On a catalog of heavy, bulky goods, shipping typically outweighs everything else, and the box often matters more than the carrier's posted rate. Crates, cat trees and pet beds take up a lot of room for what they weigh, which is exactly when a carrier bills on size. Our guide to shipping heavy and bulky pet items explains how that billing works. Kibble and litter are heavy already, and a carton bigger than the bag adds empty space you pay to ship on every order. Each extra zone also costs more for these products than for anything lighter you stock. Choosing the carton and route for each product is the subject of cat litter and kibble freight optimization.
Storage is a smaller cost, and it depends on the product. Durable goods and dry, sealed kibble are shelf-stable, so most of a pet catalog keeps in ordinary ambient space. Only some consumables, such as certain treats, soft chews and supplements, call for tighter conditions. Storage should be priced by what each SKU needs rather than at one rate for everything. Our space is ambient, with air-conditioned space in some buildings, so a SKU that needs a tighter range is worth raising early. Our guide to pet food storage and FDA-registered holding covers which products need more and what our buildings offer.
Pick and pack follows what's in the box, not only how many boxes go out. Pulling and scanning a single leash is a small job. A subscription box of mixed items, each one scanned against the order, is a much bigger one. Since most pet products are bought on subscription or auto-ship, that kitting comes around every cycle. It also guards the renewal, because a missed or wrong box is an easy reason to cancel. We cover that work in pet subscription box fulfillment and kitting.
Returns and carrier peak-season surcharges are easy to leave out of a budget. A heavy item costs more to send back. In Q4, carriers typically add peak surcharges to their rates, and many 3PLs charge peak fees of their own. Both come around every year, so they belong in your budget from the start.
Since freight usually decides the total, it pays to know what makes it grow.
The size of what you sell, not only its weight. Kibble, litter, crates and beds take up the most room in a pet catalog, and they are what usually push freight past the other costs. The more of them you sell, the bigger freight's share of the bill. A catalog of light accessories pays far less to ship. You can tell how much freight will weigh on your budget from your product list, before the first order goes out.
How far each order travels. A heavy order going farther lands in a higher zone at a higher rate. Where your stock sits compared with your buyers changes the freight bill, and not only the storage bill. When you split your stock across warehouses near demand, heavy orders can stay in the low zones. Our ground network reaches 99.77% of the US in 1-3 days, and stock split near your buyers keeps more heavy orders in the lower zones. How to choose where your stock sits is covered in multi-node inventory placement for pet brands.
Parcel or pallet. Some orders and restocks grow too big for parcel rates to make sense. At that point LTL or FTL usually costs less per unit than parcel, which puts a ceiling on what your heaviest shipments cost. Our freight and LTL/FTL routing service books those moves.
Litter and kibble are usually the bulkiest products a pet brand ships, and cat litter and kibble freight optimization goes carton by carton through how to ship them for less. For crates, beds and anything else large, read how to ship heavy and bulky pet items.
Our floor work targets the costs a mistake creates. We scan every pick against the order before it ships, so a wrong item can be caught before it becomes a cost of its own. We record the lot of each consumable at receiving and carry it through to the order, so a recall pulls only the affected lots. The team that picks a heavy order sizes its carton to the product, which can potentially cut the empty space you pay to ship on every order, and the same team arranges its freight.
There are four main ones. Storing your stock and picking and packing orders are the everyday costs. Freight is usually the biggest, because heavy, bulky pet products get billed on box size and cost more with every zone they travel. Returns are the fourth, and a heavy item costs more to send back. On top of those, carriers typically add surcharges in peak season. Storage is smaller, and it depends on the product. Dry kibble and durable goods are shelf-stable and keep in ambient space, so they don't carry the cost of a controlled temperature they never needed.
Pet products are heavy, and many are bulky too. A carrier bills the higher of two weights: what the parcel weighs, and its dimensional weight. Dimensional weight is length times width times height, divided by the carrier's published divisor. Send kibble, litter, a crate or a bed in a carton bigger than it needs and every order pays for the empty space. Heavy parcels also cost more with each zone they cross. So shipping, not storage, is usually what moves a pet brand's budget.
Only for products that need it. Our warehouses are ambient, with air-conditioned space in some buildings, and dry, sealed kibble and durable goods keep well that way. Some treats, soft chews and supplements call for tighter conditions. A single cold-storage rate on bagged dry food charges for conditions the product never needed, so pricing storage by what each SKU needs keeps this cost from creeping up. If a SKU needs a tighter range than that, tell us early so we can look at what it would need at your volume.
For a heavy, bulky catalog, usually more than any other cost, and the share grows with the size of what you ship. The more kibble, litter, crates and beds you sell, the bigger freight runs next to everything else. A catalog of light accessories has a much smaller freight bill. Your own share depends on your products, the zones you ship to and what a typical order holds, and that is what a cost estimate for your catalog works out.
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