What landed cost actually includes — and what most quotes hide
Freight rate is rarely the number that matters. Here is the full anatomy of landed cost, and where the surprises usually sit.
Most freight quotes show a rate per container or per kilo. That number is real, but it is rarely more than half of what the movement finally costs you. The gap between quoted rate and landed cost is where budgets quietly fail.
Landed cost includes the freight rate, origin and destination handling, customs duty and VAT, brokerage, demurrage and detention, insurance, and the cost of capital tied up while goods are in transit. On a typical Asia–Europe ocean move, the base rate is around 55% of the total.
The two lines that catch people out are demurrage and duty. Demurrage accrues when containers sit at the terminal beyond free time, and it compounds daily — a clearance delay of four days can cost more than the freight itself. Duty surprises come from incorrect tariff classification, which is both avoidable and, when corrected retrospectively, expensive.
Ask any provider to quote landed cost rather than freight rate, and to show the components. If they cannot, they are not managing the parts that actually move your number.
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