How Much Warehouse Storage Do You Need? A Delaware Sizing Guide

This Page Is the Sizing Question, Not the Price List

Most sellers arrive at a warehouse with a question no rate card answers: how much space do I actually need, and what will it cost me before my inventory sells? That question comes before choosing a provider, and getting it wrong in either direction is expensive — undersize and you pay rush freight to top up, oversize and you fund empty pallet positions out of margin.

This page works through the sizing decision. If you already know what you need and want rates, inclusions and how the service runs, that is on our Delaware warehouse storage service page.

Start With Days, Not Months

We bill pallet storage daily, and that changes the sizing arithmetic more than most sellers expect. A container that lands on the 3rd and clears into FBA by the 19th is billed for sixteen days, not a month. Providers who bill in monthly blocks charge you for the fortnight the pallets were not there.

So the number you should be estimating is not "how many pallets do I need" but pallet-days: how many pallets, multiplied by how long they realistically sit. A seller who turns inventory every three weeks and a seller who holds a season of stock can need identical peak space and receive wildly different invoices.

Step 1 — Convert Inventory Into Cubic Feet

Cubic feet, not unit count, is what determines space. The calculation is:

(carton length × width × height in inches) ÷ 1,728 = cubic feet per carton, then multiply by carton count.

A worked example. You are importing 4,000 units, 24 per master carton, cartons measuring 18 × 14 × 12 inches:

• 18 × 14 × 12 = 3,024 cubic inches ÷ 1,728 = 1.75 cu.ft per carton
• 4,000 ÷ 24 = 167 cartons
• 167 × 1.75 = 292 cubic feet

Use the master carton dimensions from your supplier's packing list, not the retail box. If the packing list is not to hand, measure one carton yourself — supplier spec sheets are frequently out of date after a packaging change.

Step 2 — Carton Shelving or Pallet Positions?

A standard 48 × 40 inch pallet stacked to a safe 60 inches holds roughly 66 usable cubic feet once you allow for the pallet deck itself and the gaps stacking always leaves. That figure is the pivot of the whole decision.

Carton and shelf storage is billed at $5.00 per cubic foot per month. Pallet storage starts at $5.00 per pallet per day and tiers down with volume. Compare them at the same volume:

Your inventory	Carton storage	Pallet equivalent	Cheaper option
10 cu.ft	$50 / month	1 pallet — $150 / month	Carton
25 cu.ft	$125 / month	1 pallet — $150 / month	Carton
35 cu.ft	$175 / month	1 pallet — $150 / month	Pallet
132 cu.ft	$660 / month	2 pallets — $300 / month	Pallet
292 cu.ft	$1,460 / month	5 pallets — $720 / month	Pallet

The crossover sits at roughly 30 cubic feet. Below it, shelving is cheaper because you pay only for the volume you occupy. Above it, you are paying shelf rates for what is effectively a pallet's worth of goods, and palletising is the better deal — the 292 cu.ft example above is the difference between $1,460 and $720 a month for the same stock.

Two caveats. Cartons that are heavy, awkwardly shaped, or arriving on a truck rather than by parcel are palletised regardless of volume, because handling them individually costs more than the space saves. And a pallet you plan to break down and ship out within a week is often best left as a pallet even below the crossover — you save nothing by decanting it twice.

Step 3 — Model the Monthly Cost Honestly

Our pallet rate is tiered, which means each band is charged at its own rate rather than the whole quantity dropping to the cheapest rate you qualify for. This is the single most misread line on any storage rate card, so here is the full arithmetic:

Band	Rate
Pallets 1–4	$5.00 / pallet / day
Pallets 5–9	$4.00 / pallet / day
Pallets 10–19	$3.00 / pallet / day
Pallets 20 and above	$2.00 / pallet / day

Pallets	Calculation	Per day	30 days
3	3 × $5	$15	$450
5	4 × $5 + 1 × $4	$24	$720
10	4 × $5 + 5 × $4 + 1 × $3	$43	$1,290
20	4 × $5 + 5 × $4 + 10 × $3 + 1 × $2	$72	$2,160
30	4 × $5 + 5 × $4 + 10 × $3 + 11 × $2	$92	$2,760

Reading "20 pallets at $2.00" and calculating 20 × $2 × 30 = $1,200 gives you the wrong number. The real figure is $2,160, because the first nineteen pallets are still charged in their own bands. We publish the arithmetic because the alternative is you discovering it on your first invoice. The storage calculator on our homepage runs the same bands if you want to try your own numbers.

Step 4 — Size for the Peak, Then Plan the Trough

Sellers usually estimate storage from average inventory and are then surprised in Q4. Size the space for your peak — the week after your largest container lands — but plan the cost around how quickly that peak drains.

A useful sanity check: multiply your peak pallet count by the tiered daily rate, then by the number of days before half of it moves. If that number is uncomfortable, the problem is usually order quantity or lead time rather than the storage rate. Splitting one large purchase order into two staggered shipments costs a little more in freight and often much less in storage.

Being candid about our own rate card: a single pallet left in the $5.00 band for a full year costs $1,825 — frequently more than the goods on it are worth. In that scenario the issue is not the price of storage but demand forecasting, and we would rather tell you than quietly invoice it. Inventory that has not moved in 90 days gets flagged to you.

Four Things That Quietly Inflate a Storage Bill

• Half-empty pallets. A pallet stacked to 30 inches occupies a full position and is billed as one. Consolidating two half pallets into one is the fastest saving available to most sellers.
• Mixed SKUs with different sell-through. A fast SKU and a dead SKU sharing a pallet means the dead one keeps the whole position alive. Separate them at receiving.
• Storing packaging materials. Boxes, inserts and dunnage take pallet positions at inventory rates. Ship them in as needed rather than warehousing a year's supply.
• Buffer stock held in three places. Separate reserves for FBA, your own store and a third marketplace means paying for the same safety stock repeatedly. A single 3PL pool that replenishes all channels removes two of the three.

What Happens on the Delaware Side

Two things about the location matter to the sizing decision. Claymont sits inside the East Coast corridor, so two-to-three day ground shipping reaches most of the US population — you can hold less regional buffer stock than a seller splitting inventory across coasts. And Delaware charges 0% state sales tax, so inventory received and dispatched here is bought in a zero-tax state. That is separate from federal import duty, which applies wherever your warehouse sits.

Receiving is where sizing meets reality: cartons and parcels are received and logged free, pallet receiving is $25.00 per pallet. Details of that process are in our warehouse receiving guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many cubic feet fit on one pallet?
Around 66 usable cubic feet on a standard 48 × 40 inch pallet stacked to 60 inches, once you allow for the pallet deck and stacking gaps. Use that figure to convert your cubic-feet total into a pallet count.

At what point should I switch from carton to pallet storage?
At roughly 30 cubic feet. Below that, carton storage at $5.00 per cubic foot per month is cheaper; above it, a pallet position at tiered daily rates costs less for the same goods.

Why is 20 pallets $2,160 a month and not $1,200?
Because the rate is tiered. Only pallets from the twentieth onward are billed at $2.00; the first four are still $5.00, the next five $4.00 and the next ten $3.00. Each band keeps its own rate.

Is there a minimum storage period or contract?
No. Storage is billed daily with no minimum term, no setup fee and no long-term contract. You pay for the days your pallets are actually with us.

What does it cost to bring inventory in?
Carton and parcel receiving, including logging and quantity verification, is free. Pallet receiving is $25.00 per pallet. Container unloading is quoted case by case.