Your freight bill is decided at the packaging stage
Massage devices are light for their size, which means freight is charged on volume rather than on the scale. Two products with the same bill of materials and the same unit price can differ by thirty percent in delivered cost purely because one carton was designed around the product and the other around the box supplier's standard sizes.
This guide covers how the charge is calculated, where the volume hides, and what to ask for before you agree a price.
Actual weight, volumetric weight, and the divisor
Express and air freight bill on the greater of actual and volumetric weight. Volumetric weight is length times width times height in centimetres, divided by a divisor: 5000 for most express services, 6000 for air freight. A carton measuring 60 by 40 by 40 cm is 96,000 cubic centimetres, which becomes 19.2 kg on a 5000 divisor, regardless of the fact that it weighs twelve.
| Mode | Charged on | Where the optimisation is |
|---|---|---|
| Express courier | Greater of actual and volumetric, divisor 5000 | Smaller carton, less void fill |
| Air freight | Greater of actual and volumetric, divisor 6000 | Same, plus pallet build |
| Sea LCL | Cubic metres | Stacking efficiency and standard carton sizes |
| Sea FCL | Container capacity | Palletised versus floor loaded |
The two centimetres that cost a container
Container loading is a packing problem, and small changes at the carton level compound. Widening a carton by two centimetres can drop a pallet layer, which drops the container by dozens of cartons. In the other direction, replacing a moulded foam insert with a folded card insert frequently recovers eight to fifteen percent of volume without changing the product at all.
The three figures to ask for
Every quotation should carry these, and a quotation without them cannot be turned into a delivered cost:
- Outer carton dimensions in centimetres, measured rather than nominal.
- Quantity per carton.
- Gross and net weight per carton.
Carton strength is a damage rate, not a spec
A sea container reaches high temperatures and high humidity, and corrugated board loses a large part of its stacking strength under those conditions. That is why single-wall cartons that survived a courier trial collapse in a container. Double wall, a humidity additive in the board, or a better internal structure each reduce the damage rate, and the damage rate is a real cost: a claim takes longer to settle than the customer is willing to wait.
Pallet or floor loaded
Palletising costs ten to fifteen percent of the container and buys faster, safer handling at the destination. Floor loading recovers that volume and requires labour to unload. If the goods are going to a marketplace warehouse, pallets are effectively mandatory; if they are going straight to a distributor who will break them anyway, floor loading is often the better trade.
Work backwards from the retail price
- Set the retail price and subtract the channel margin to get a landed cost ceiling.
- Subtract duty and freight to get an FOB ceiling.
- See what packaging fits inside that ceiling, rather than designing packaging and then discovering the freight.
- Ask for two packaging options against the same product: the cheapest that is acceptable, and the one that actually sells.
What to send us
Destination postcode, quantity, and whether the goods are going to a warehouse or a business address. We will quote the delivered number and show the carton figures behind it, so you can see which part of the cost is the product and which part is the box.
Questions we get on this
Why is my freight more than the goods?
Can I reduce the carton size?
Do I need a drop test report?
Is sea freight always cheaper?
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