The Carton Decides More of Your Landed Cost Than the Cap Does

Two suppliers can quote the same unit price and deliver very different landed cost. The gap is usually in the carton, and it is the easiest line on the order to fix.A standard cap carton measures 52 x 43 x 57 cm and holds 150 pieces at about 15 kg gross, with 25 pieces to an inner box. That works out to 0.1275 cubic metres, and a density of roughly 118 kg per cubic metre. Freight is not sold by the piece, so those two figures - not the unit price - are what you actually pay for.By air it is worse than it looks. Carriers charge the greater of actual and volumetric weight, and volumetric weight is length times width times height divided by 6,000. For this carton that is 21.2 kg against 15 kg on the scale. A box of caps is charged as light cargo, because the airline is selling space.By sea the same arithmetic runs the other way. A 40-foot high cube loads about 68 cubic metres of usable space, which is 533 of these cartons - roughly 79,950 pieces. Pack 200 to the carton instead and the same container takes about 106,600 pieces, a third more, for nothing but the inner box.There is a ceiling, and it arrives on the weight side. At 200 pieces the carton climbs to about 19.5 kg, above the 20 kg two-person lift threshold used in many markets and above what warehouse staff want to handle all day. A carton that cannot be lifted safely gets dropped, and dropped cartons arrive with crushed crowns.So ask three numbers in the first reply: pieces per carton, carton size, gross weight. Then run the arithmetic once for your own quantity. It takes five minutes and it is the difference between comparing prices and comparing what the goods cost to land.Our standard carton is 52 x 43 x 57 cm, 150 pieces, 25 to an inner box, about 15 kg gross, shipped from Shanghai by sea, air or express.