Apartment Package Handling Cost Benchmarks

Cost by daily handling load (at $19/hr base wage)

Daily handling hours are the single biggest lever in the model — bigger than wage. Moving from 6 hours a day to 8 adds roughly $14,800 a year at the same wage. This is why volume growth, not wage inflation, is what usually breaks an in-house package operation's budget.

• 3 hrs/day (78 hrs/month) — about $1,852/month, $22,230/year. Typical of sub-200-unit communities with moderate volume.
• 4.5 hrs/day (117 hrs/month) — about $2,779/month, $33,345/year. Common at 200-250 units.
• 6 hrs/day (156 hrs/month) — about $3,705/month, $44,460/year. The stabilized 250-350 unit baseline.
• 8 hrs/day (208 hrs/month) — about $4,940/month, $59,280/year. A full-time role by any other name.
• 10 hrs/day (260 hrs/month) — about $6,175/month, $74,100/year. Student housing at move-in and Q4 peak.

Portfolio-level cost: multiply, then look again

The model is per-community, and portfolio owners consistently underestimate the aggregate because the cost is buried inside on-site payroll rather than shown as a line item. Four communities at 6 hours a day and a $19/hr base wage is 624 handling hours a month — about $14,820 monthly, or roughly $177,840 a year, spread across four budgets where nobody sees the total.

That aggregate is the number worth benchmarking against an outsourced service. Compared community by community, in-house handling looks like a rounding error. Compared portfolio-wide, it looks like what it is: a full operating function with no dedicated owner, no chain of custody, and no coverage plan when the person handling it is out.

Methodology and assumptions

We publish these assumptions so the numbers can be audited rather than trusted. Where a figure is a range instead of a point estimate, that reflects genuine variance across markets and community types, not hedging.

• Formula: monthly labor cost = hours per day x 26 x base wage x 1.25.
• 26 working days per month reflects six-day carrier delivery weeks, standard in multifamily.
• 25% labor burden covers payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits load, and PTO for an on-site role.
• Wage range of $17-$23/hr reflects on-site package handling roles across most US multifamily markets in 2026.
• Costs are labor only. Chargebacks, overtime, storage build-out, and lost leasing hours are excluded by design, making every figure a conservative floor.
• Last reviewed: August 2026. Model in continuous use in Postal Solutions proposals since 2000.

How to cite these benchmarks

These figures are free to reuse in articles, industry research, budget decks, and board materials. Cite as: Postal Solutions, "Apartment Package Handling Cost Benchmarks," 2026, https://postalsolutions.com/resources/package-handling-cost-benchmarks.

If you are modeling a specific portfolio and want the full breakdown — including the chargeback and peak-season variables this page deliberately excludes — the white paper carries the extended model, and we will run your actual unit counts and volumes on request.