50%+ FBA Inbound Shipments Forced to the West Coast, when only 17% of Sales are "Pacific"

Fulfillment by Amazon Shipping to Amazon
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Here are 2024 Sales by Region:

USA-East 36%
USA-Midwest 47%
USA-West 17%

Above, “West” is NM, MT, NV, UT, CO, ID, AZ, WY, WA, OR, AL, HI, CA, everything west of the Rockies.

But here are the “5 FCs” selected for each shipment sent this year, shipped from our East Coast warehouse:

5-Mar
SBD1 BLOOMINGTON, CA
LGHB8 RIALTO CA
MQJ1 GREENFIELD, IN
SWF2 YONKERS NY
CLT2 CHARLOTTE NC

26-Mar
SBD1 BLOOMINGTON, CA
SBD1 BLOOMINGTON, CA
SCK4 STOCKTON CA
IAH3 HOUSTON
MQJ1 GREENFIELD, IN

5-Apr
VGT2 RIVERSIDE CA
SBD1 BLOOMINGTON CA
RMN3 MIDDLETOWN PA
CLT2 CHARLOTTE NC
CLT2 CHARLOTTE NC

Worse yet, the wait times at the CA FCs are longer than any of the others, so this cannot be that Amazon is sending shipments to under-utilized FCs.

But this is costing us money, both in shipping fees, and in “low inventory” fees, because the diversion of shipments to CA is keeping product not “received” for up to a month.

Has anyone worked out a way to deal with this? Amazon wants to explain how the scheme should work, but it doesn’t work.

Do I pay to ship to one FC? That would put a lot more product in “FC Transfer” state, but I am not clear if this would at least avoid the per-sale “low inventory fee”. I suspect that the FC transfer program is smarter than the inbound program, as it has been around longer.

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Have you tried asking Seller Help’s Ai - it is by far, more useful outside of the SAS of course. I have no immediate solution but noticed that shipments are taking longer to receive so I’m doubling the time it takes to receive at FC’s and sending shipments well in advance. Sorry I don’t t have anything specific to your issue - @ASV_Vites ?

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You’re spot on. It certainly almost seems like Amazon is forcing sellers to pay placement fees so their business benefits. This ■■■■ is new this year… The splits don’t make logical sense anymore.

And West Coast DC’s - Holy mother of pearl… They are SOOOOOOOOOOOO backed up. Wait times for check ins for LTL are 6-8 weeks. Everyday, I get a delivery disruption email from west coast DC’s.

We have a pallet going to Bloomington CA (SBD1) that we shipped in FEBRUARY! AND IT WENT ON AN AMAZON TRUCK.

The only way to drop the delays and the nonsensical placements (locations), is to pay the placement fees. We haven’t gotten there yet and hope to be able to control our inventory to the point where we don’t have to. It’s fun screwing Amazon…

Our margin has gone up since placement fees started / FBA fees were reduced.

But it could come to a point where it makes sense to pay more. Of course with the tariffs and other assorted nonsense, including an expected consumer spending slowdown, everything is up in the air.

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Yep - all tariffs paused for 90 days except China raised to 125% lol

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Hi and welcome to SellersAskSellers @ZaphodBeeblebrox !

Thanks for including this tidbit because otherwise I would have assumed that there was a (non-nefarious) method to Amazon’s madness.

So you do not recommend that OP simply ship to a single FC?

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It’s a business decision that the OP needs to make. In the long run, if inventory is being managed tightly, doing so should ultimately pay off.

We are not doing that yet because Amazon still moves stuff around, even if it’s not going to the best target DC initially.

I’m not sure what Amazon is doing here because it doesn’t make much sense for them or the sellers.

And to force inventory to DC’s that they know, and are notoriously perpetually backed up, is really asinine to say the least.

The fact that this was brought up here, coupled with our personal recent similar experience makes me think. Something is certainly going on because this is new and intentional.

We can’t be the only seller that has taken great advantage of the splits / placement fees / FBA fee reduction to go along with it.

I have a feeling that Amazon is feeling the pain and is trying to make up for it by forcing things that don’t make sense so the seller pays more in freight. The freight, minus the placement fees you don’t pay is still cheaper but it is greatly eating into the savings and causing delays.

Our 5-pallet LTL splits used to avg $650 total in freight, using and waiting for Amazon Freight to handle the goods. Now they are over $1000. With each 11K total unit shipment, we save $3000 in placement fees and save more bc the FBA fee was lowered when the program was introduced.

They may be testing the waters.

I don’t know how much good it was doing anyway. Even if a pallet of goods goes to a DC, it’s still being split to 15 FC’s. The work appears to be the same on Amazon’s side.

It looks like SPD shipments are a different story. They seem to be being sent to centralized areas within regions and staying where they were shipped. That helps Amazon and may not help sellers due to zipcode smile van time to home which is critical for conversion in non-niche categories.

ETA - I should also note that those SPD splits are going directly to the FC’s, not DC’s. So they get delivered directly to the facility that is shipping to buyers.

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More data, as one can never have enough data… Amazon is ALSO doing more shipping. Below is just one shipment. Note that for the first shipment listed to SBD1, 36 of 48 units were immediately sent to locations back on the OTHER side of the Rockies from CA, save for 2 units sent to NM.

The data below is not pretty - sorry, but I can’t figure out a “table” for this forum thing. The Data for the “SBD1” FC is the destination FC, the city/state, the number of units sent to it, and the date that each arrived at that destination FC.

Three of the other cartons of 48 were all distributed reasonably well, but the pattern seems that CONSISTENLY 1 of each of my 5 cartons is being sent to California, only to have the bulk of it backhauled immediately to the other side of the Rockies.

Also, it is interesting to see that 2 cartons of 48 were sent to Greenfield IN, only to have one of them immediately sent back to Charlotte, NC (CLT4) when we shipped 2 of the other cartons directly to Charlotte, NC (CLT2). Why not just send 3 to Charlotte? All I can think is that we are paying extra to better-utilize Amazon’s backhauling trailers.

And I think I see the “cost savings” for Amazon here - due to customer population alone, lots of stuff goes to the West coast from the East coast. But the trucks going back go back at least partly empty. So, by forcing me to pay more shipping to send things to California, Amazon uses a truck that would otherwise go back East half empty, rather than increasing the number of trucks already in the east. So, if your product sells overwhelming east of the Rockies, you subsidize the cost of the more generic-demand products, which can be evenly distributed based solely upon population.

What do we do? Well, if this is causing you to slide into “Low Inventory Fee”, you jam a shipment to ONE location, and pay the “placement fee”, if that is lower than the low inventory fee you would avoid by doing so. Either way there is a fee, and these are new fees, so they are still not well understood (to us, at least).

WHERE AMAZON HIDES THIS DATA: Shipment “Shipment Events” show which FCs were distributed to from the first, but [grrr!] NOT the quantities. The inventory ledger, which shows to and from and quantity and date, but NOT which shipment each unit came from [grrr! again!]
So, you end up sorting the inventory ledger by FC, and then looking for dates that come after the date of delivery to the FC that shipped to each downstream FC.
You could lather, rinse, repeat and see further FC transfers down the chain, but therein lies madness.

3/5/2025				
SBD1	48			
Bloomington, CA		
DSM5 (BONDURANT, IA		1	3/31/2025
		STL8 (SAINT PETERS, MO	4	3/30/2025
		DAL2 (DFW Airport, TX		1	3/31/2025
		DFW7 (Fort Worth, TX		6	3/28/2025
		ELP1 (EL PASO, TX		1	3/25/2025
		OMA2 (OMAHA, NE		1	4/6/2025
		MDW7 (Monee, IL		1	3/28/2025
		AUS3 (WACO, TX		4	3/27/2025
		FTW6 (Dallas, TX		5	3/27/2025
		ABQ1 (ALBUQUERQUE, NM	2	3/24/2025
		TUL2 (TULSA, OK		1	3/27/2025
		OKC1 (OKLAHOMA CITY, OK	3	3/27/2025
		HOU2 (Houston, TX		1	3/16/2025
		DAL3 (DALLAS, TX		5	3/27/2025
		ORD5 (MATTESON, IL		1	3/28/2025
		IGQ1 (HARVEY, IL		1	3/29/2025
				
MQJ1	96	3/16/2025		
Greenfield, IN		CLT4 (CHARLOTTE, NC	48	3/18/2025
			AKC1 (AKRON, OH)	48	3/19/2025

SWF2	48			
Yonkers, NY		
SYR1 (LIVERPOOL, NY)		
				
LGB8	48			
Rialto, CA		
ONT6 (Moreno Valley, CA		
		OXR1 (OXNARD, CA		
		DEN3 (Thornton, CO		
		SAN3 (SAN DIEGO, CA		
		SCK6 (TRACY, CA		
		SMF1 (Sacramento, CA		
		BFI4 (Kent, WA		
		PDX9 (Troutdale, OR		
		SBD6 (Ontario, CA		
		PAE2 (ARLINGTON, WA		
		FAT1 (Fresno, CA		
		GEG1 (SPOKANE, WA		
				
CLT2	96
Charlotte, NC			
		TPA1 (Ruskin, FL		
		MEM4 (MEMPHIS, TN		
		JAX7 (JACKSONVILLE, FL		
		BTR1 (BATON ROUGE, LA		
		TPA4 (Temple Terrace, FL		
		BHM1 (BESSEMER, AL		
		AGS1 (APPLING, GA		
		SHV1 (SHREVEPORT, LA		
		MIA1 (Opa-Locka, FL		
		ATL2 (STONE MOUNTAIN, GA		
		TLH2 (TALLAHASSEE, FL		
		MCO1 (Orlando, FL
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How do we tell a “DC” from an “FC”? Is there a list?

I never had to think about this, as traditionally, we’d send to reasonably nearby places, and the UPS fees were reasonable, and we did not worry about how Amazon did their internal distribution, as no one complained about the product not being delivered via “Amazon Prime delivery”, so it was not an problem.

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I’ve always just googled the code of the facility if I didn’t know… Not aware of any official list, but maybe someone here has one they could share.

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I need to add that my “theory” makes very little sense in the context of Amazon’s shipments from China and other Asian countries - tons of stuff arrives on the West coast and have to be shipped East.

So, one would THEN conclude that the “half-empty trailers” are the ones going East to West.

So, I cannot support my own theory as presented above.

My brain hurts, and I need a drink.

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I highly doubt that Amazon ever moves less than a FT. They wait and consolidate, and it doesn’t take long, I’m sure. Even if there’s an extra stop or 2 along the way…

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Oh yes, of course - so this is hoped to fill a trailer quicker?
But it is at an overloaded FC, so it ends up taking longer for the individual product in queue, just to fill a trailer?

I don’t think we will ever know. It could all be the work of just a monkey throwing darts.

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That’s true. We think / talk logically. That’s often not how Amazon works but full trucks are logistics 101, so if they aren’t doing that, then I would be shocked but not surprised.

I’m pretty sure that their logistics algorithms are pretty tight and tried and true at this point. Some of the strange destination points we are seeing may actually be designed to be a step ahead of what Amazon is planning to move where and when.

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MORE Data…

This time, I sent a shipment of 13 cartons and paid the placement fee to send them somewhere on the “East Coast”, which turned out to be Fayetteville, NC. 48 units per carton, so 624 total.

And looky here - they sent most all of them somewhere along the east side of the Mississippi!

This is a departure from before, note that nothing went to California at all.

Screenshot 2025-04-20 165839
Screenshot 2025-04-20 165839482×647 28.1 KB

I won’t know the totals sent to each FC until they arrive, as Amazon’s half-assed “inventory ledger” only shows things that are received (with positive numbers) or not received (using negative numbers) at each destination FC, but does not reveal how many are sent from the initial FC.

Reading the book “Exit Interview” by Kristi Coulter tends to indicate that Amazon is so focused on being “lean” that their systems are rarely enhanced, and rarely up to the standards most companies would call “minimum”. I’ve yet to catch a serious outright error in the inventory “as audited”, but the task of simply verifying inventory is made much harder than it needs to be by Amazon’s many contradictory ways of “counting”, but I have caught isolated cases where an item that is warehouse- or customer-damaged is listed for “removal”, but cannot be removed, because it does not actually exist. Or something like that, no one can explain.

So, from observations, it seems that if I am paying the shipping, the view is “let him pay to ship to the furthest FC from him, just in CASE we need some there”.

But if I refuse to pay the extra shipping, and pay the placement fee instead, the distribution is then far more reasonable, more in line with my ranking of 2024 sales by state in the USA.

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Maybe it all has to do with the Tariffs?

And if not yet, I bet that we will all see the case where more items head west.

The volume on Amazons west coast warehouses must be tanking, and both space and man-power are probably for the first time in a long time available.

Whaat cha all think?

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All of our pallets, where it makes financial sense to pay placement fees, go to this DC lately.

We have 3 pallets going there next week. 2 getting picked up tomorrow, another on Wed.

Been shipping LTL and SPD to FBA for 8 years. Not once have we gone there. Interesting that you got sent there as well.

We had a check in at Bloomington CA this AM. That pallet shipped 37 days ago… Not sure they aren’t backed up.

I think you’re right though in the fact that in the near future they may not be backed up. Just not yet…

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Keep in mind the receive centers are gateways to FC’s and there are many factors that can determine distribution methods. Without knowing capacity, receive times, manpower, internal logistics costs, transfer bid board rates, backhaul advantages, etc. everyone is just guessing using the lens of their singular product knowledge and sales history.
Three body problem with the available data IMO.

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Gateway FC’s are a thing on Amazon? :open_mouth:

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Yes, they are called receive centers and they do not hold inventory according to the “Amazonian” I spoke with at OAK3. They may be in the same building or next to other FC’s but they only act as a crossdock.

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That Amazonian is correct; it’s all part & parcel of what’s described in this 091725 SAS post:

https://test.sellersasksellers.com/t/delivery-disruption-emails-fba/4725/14

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