What actually decides the price?
Six things move the number, and none of them is the one buyers usually assume. Mode and charging basis come first, because they set the shape of the whole quotation.
How the cargo is charged
Ocean FCL is priced per container, so the cost does not move with how full the box is — filling a 40HQ further costs nothing extra, which is why FCL gets cheaper per unit as volume rises. Ocean LCL is priced per chargeable cubic metre with a one cubic metre minimum, so a single pallet carries a fixed floor. Air is priced per chargeable kilo, which is the greater of actual weight and volumetric weight. Express is priced per kilo on the same principle with a different divisor. Deciding the mode is therefore the largest single cost decision on most shipments.
Chargeable weight, not gross weight
Air networks divide cubic centimetres by 6,000, so one cubic metre is about 166.7 kg for air. Courier networks commonly divide by 5,000, so the same cubic metre is about 200 kg for express. Light, bulky cargo is therefore billed on its volume rather than its weight — furniture, packaging and textiles are the usual cases. If volumetric weight governs, reducing carton size lowers the bill without changing the cargo.
Origin and destination pair
The same cargo costs different amounts depending on where in China it loads and where it lands. South China ports serve some trades non-stop and others only by relay, and a relay routing costs more in both time and handling. On the destinations we publish, transit from China ranges from 2 days to Vietnam to 96 days to the Black Sea, and that spread reflects routing and frequency rather than distance alone.
The commodity and its tariff position
Duty and import tax are charged on the customs value, and duty is decided by the commodity code rather than by the product name. A change of code can move a rate by tens of percentage points, and the same goods can attract anti-dumping or additional duties in some markets. This is why the code is reviewed before a price is quoted rather than after.
The terms of sale
Ex works, FOB, CIF, DAP and DDP allocate the same physical costs differently. A quote that looks cheaper is often just a quote that stops earlier — at the port rather than at your door. Comparing quotations on the same Incoterm, over the same door-to-door scope, is the only way to compare them at all.
What the quote includes
Freight, origin handling, export documentation, destination terminal charges, customs clearance, duty and tax, and final delivery are separate lines, and quotations differ mainly in how many of them they name. Two quotes can differ by more than the freight itself purely on what is inside the number.
What lines make up a landed cost?
A quotation is a set of lines rather than one figure. These are the five groups, and a quotation that does not name them is not necessarily cheaper — it may simply stop earlier.
| Group | What sits inside it |
|---|---|
| Origin | Pickup from suppliers, consolidation, warehouse receiving and measurement, export documentation, terminal handling at the Chinese port or airport. |
| International transport | Ocean freight per container or per chargeable cubic metre, or air freight per chargeable kilo. This is the line quoted most often and the one that moves most with the market. |
| Destination terminal and clearance | Terminal handling, customs entry and clearance, and any inspection or examination that is ordered. |
| Duty and import tax | Charged on the customs value, decided by the commodity code and the origin. Where we have a sourced rate for a market it is published on that destination page. |
| Delivery | Final movement to the delivery address, including any inland leg. Inland destinations such as Toronto or Czechia carry a rail or road leg that coastal ports do not. |
Why does this page not quote a rate?
Freight rates move weekly with capacity, season and commodity, and a figure written into a page is wrong within days. We publish the parts that do not move — the charging bases, the divisors, the transit ranges measured from real carrier schedules, and the duty positions we can source — and confirm the rate against your actual cargo at quoting time. That is also why the calculators on this site return estimates and say so.