Savannah handled a record 4.22 million loaded TEUs in fiscal year 2026. Total volume was flat at 5,669,948 TEUs, almost identical to the 5.70 million the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) reported the year before.
Great headline. Not much help if you’re the one picking a warehouse.
Port throughput is the easy part. What decides whether your freight lands on time and on budget is everything after the gate: the truck ride, the space, the customs paperwork, and whether anyone can tell you where your pallets are.
One thing up front. We’re Porter Logistics, and we run a facility in Pooler, so we have a stake in this. It isn’t a ranking, and we haven’t audited anyone else. It’s five things that separate providers who hold up under pressure from providers who just have space, built on port and market data. Use the list on us too. If you want the wider buyer’s view, start with how to choose a 3PL company in Savannah.
June was up 18% on June 2025. The year as a whole wasn’t. That’s the part to remember: a flat year made of big swings. Your warehouse has to absorb the spikes, not the average.
Everyone says it. “Minutes from the port.” Minutes is a number you can price, so price it.
About 83% of Savannah’s containers leave by truck, which means drayage hits your landed cost on almost every box. Here’s a rough way to see what extra miles cost. Every figure below is an assumption, so swap in your own carrier quotes.
| Assumption | Number |
|---|---|
| Warehouse A to the terminal | 7 miles |
| Warehouse B to the terminal | 25 miles |
| Extra truck time per container at 30 mph average | about 72 minutes (36 extra round-trip miles) |
| Truck and driver time | $100 an hour |
| Warehouse B’s rent advantage | $1.00 per sq ft on 60,000 sq ft, or $60,000 a year |
At 100 containers a month, B’s extra drayage runs about $144,000 a year. A’s higher rent is cheaper. At 25 containers a month, B’s extra drayage is about $36,000, and B wins. The break-even is roughly 500 containers a year.
So “closer is always better” is wrong. It’s better when your volume is high or your rent gap is small. Past that, the farther building can win. Most providers won’t walk you through this, because their pitch is distance.
Two more things change the math. Terminal wait times don’t change the gap per trip, but a long gate queue eats the day for every driver, near or far. And if your freight is headed inland, rail access can matter more than seven miles versus twenty-five. For the record, Porter’s Pooler facility is about seven miles from Garden City Terminal, with a yard for 50+ trailers, and it does transloading and cross-docking on site. Thinking about moving your import flows here? Our post on shifting port networks to Savannah goes deeper.
CBRE’s Q3 2026 Savannah industrial report, published October 8, looks calm on the surface.
Vacancy is 10.0%. Asking rent is $7.32 per square foot, up 4.4% on the year. Net absorption was a positive 1.5 million square feet, leasing volume jumped 45.4% quarter over quarter, and 5.1 million square feet is under construction. Owner-users led the activity, including Amazon’s 1.0 million square foot purchase. CBRE tells occupiers to prepare for tighter availability and steady rents through mid-2027.
Ten percent vacancy sounds roomy. But owner-users buy buildings, and a building that’s been bought is off the leasing market. That’s our reading, not CBRE’s, but it points at mid-size users. Need 20,000 to 100,000 square feet? You’re too small to lease a big box and too big to tuck into a corner of someone’s racking.
Which brings you to the trade-off nobody likes to price. Public (multi-client) warehousing means no long commitment, but your space isn’t guaranteed at peak when everyone wants it. Contract (dedicated) warehousing locks the space in, and you pay for empty racks in the slow months. The question to ask isn’t “Do you have flexibility?” It’s: how many positions will you hold for me in October, and what do I pay for that? If the answer is vague, so is the guarantee. Inventory overflow is worth a line in the contract for the same reason.
Savannah moves food, chemicals, resins, consumer goods and more. Specialists should be able to prove they handle your kind of cargo. A badge on a website isn’t proof.
| If you ship… | Ask for… |
|---|---|
| Food and beverage | SQF certification, GMP, AIB audit results, and state agriculture licensing. SQF is a GFSI-recognized food safety program. |
| Organic products | USDA Organic certification for the facility |
| Chemicals and hazardous materials | DOT hazmat registration, EPA registration, and Alliance for Chemical Distribution (ACD) Responsible Distribution verification |
| Imports with duty deferral | A CBP-approved bonded warehouse, since goods can only be stored in bond under 19 CFR Part 19 |
Here’s what a certificate doesn’t tell you. Certification attaches to a specific site and a specific scope. A provider’s Atlanta building being certified says nothing about the Savannah building you’d actually use. So ask three things. Is it this address? What does the scope cover? When does it expire, and what did the last audit flag?
If a provider won’t show you the audit, walk away. Porter’s Savannah facility holds GMP and SQF, organic, CBP-bonded, and DOT hazmat and ACD status, and the list is on our certifications page. Ask to see ours too. For the cargo-specific side, there’s hazmat and chemical warehousing in Savannah. And before signing anything, read what happens to your goods if something goes wrong: warehouse insurance and liability.
A customs bonded warehouse lets you store imported goods without paying duty until you withdraw them for US consumption. Re-export them and you may never pay it. With tariffs moving, everyone wants one.
It’s not free, and it’s not for everyone. Bonded storage means a bond, strict inventory records for CBP, in-bond paperwork to move goods in, and a withdrawal entry every time they leave. That’s work, and someone pays for it.
It’s usually worth it if you:
It’s probably not worth it if your goods clear customs and sell within days, or the duty is small compared to the admin cost. Then plain warehousing is simpler. A foreign trade zone is another route with different rules, and our bonded warehouse vs. FTZ comparison lays out the differences. A provider who only sells you one of the two isn’t giving you advice.
Why does this matter right now? The GPA just extended its memorandum of understanding with the Panama Canal Authority for five years, Seatrade Maritime reports. Routes and tariffs both keep changing, and we saw how fast sourcing plans can shift in our chemical supply chain post. If you do decide to use bond, Porter’s Savannah customs bonded warehouse has 230,400 sq ft of bonded space.
Every provider has a dashboard. A dashboard shows what’s in the system. It doesn’t show what’s on the rack.
So don’t ask whether you’ll get real-time visibility. Ask how they keep the data true. How often do they cycle count? What’s their inventory accuracy, and how do they measure it? Can they trace a lot number from receiving to shipping while you watch? Run that last test in the demo. It takes five minutes and tells you more than any brochure. Then check whether the data flows into your systems or into a spreadsheet someone emails on Fridays.
For the record, Porter gives customers a dashboard and WMS at no extra charge, with prebuilt integrations for 50+ shopping carts and marketplaces, EDI support, and an open REST API. The details are on our technology integrations page.
None of these five is exotic. That’s the point. The best providers just do the unglamorous parts on purpose: they price the distance, put a number on flexibility, show you the audit, tell you when you don’t need the fancy option, and prove the count.
Porter Logistics runs a 230,400 sq ft facility at 195 Nordic Way in Pooler, GA, with food-grade, hazmat and chemical, temperature-controlled, and customs bonded storage. Look at our Savannah location or call (912) 915-0912. Bring this list. We’d rather be tested.
