Co-warehousing terms, explained.

Co-warehousing is private warehouse + light-office suites rented month-to-month, with shared loading docks, forklifts, carrier pickups, and on-site operational support.

A 3PL is a service company that stores your inventory and ships orders on your behalf, charging per unit handled plus storage.

A drop bin is a shared, gated receiving container in a co-warehouse where members place outbound packages for daily UPS, FedEx, or USPS pickup.

A modular suite is a private warehouse compartment built with movable walls, typically without its own ceiling (the warehouse roof is shared).

Micro-fulfillment is a small-footprint shipping operation that handles low-to-medium daily order volume from a single suite, usually 50–500 orders per day.

Pre-leasing is the period before a warehouse building opens, when tenants can reserve a suite (and sometimes lock in pricing) in advance of move-in.

A dock door is a raised warehouse loading entry where a truck backs up flush to the floor, usually fitted with a leveler to bridge the gap to the trailer bed.

Pick and pack is the fulfillment process of selecting the items in each order (picking) and packing them into a labeled, ship-ready shipment.

A triple-net (NNN) lease is a commercial lease where the tenant pays base rent plus the three 'nets' (property taxes, building insurance, and maintenance/CAM) on top.

Flex space is a hybrid commercial property that combines warehouse and office under one roof, so a tenant can run operations and a back office in the same unit.

Cross-docking is moving inbound goods straight from a receiving dock to an outbound shipment with little or no storage in between.

Clear height is the usable vertical space in a warehouse: the distance from the floor to the lowest overhead obstruction, which sets how high you can safely stack.

CAM (common area maintenance) charges are the tenant's share of the cost to operate and maintain a building's shared areas, billed on top of base rent in most commercial leases.

Last-mile delivery is the final leg of shipping: moving a parcel from the local carrier hub or warehouse to the customer's door, typically the slowest and most expensive part of fulfillment.

A pallet position is one standardized slot in a warehouse racking system that holds a single pallet, the basic unit warehouses use to measure and price storage capacity.

A fulfillment center is a warehouse built specifically to receive, store, pick, pack, and ship customer orders, optimized for fast outbound order flow rather than long-term storage.

Shared warehouse space is a building where multiple businesses each rent a private area while sharing the docks, forklifts, and amenities; the model is also known as co-warehousing or warehouse coworking.