Mobility
Landed cost per chair, from the packing list
Two chairs at the same FOB price are not the same purchase. Carton volume and container loading decide the number that actually reaches your P&L.
FOB is the price of a chair at a Chinese port. Landed cost is the price of a chair on your warehouse floor, and the gap between them is mostly freight — which is a function of volume, not of selling price.
Four numbers do the work
- Carton dimensions → cubic metres per unit.
- Units per 40HQ → how much of a container one SKU can fill.
- Gross weight → trucking and any weight-limited lane.
- Ocean rate per container → yours, not ours.
Freight per unit is roughly rate × containers ÷ units. The trap is a part-filled container: 200 units of a chair that loads 252 per 40HQ still pays for a whole 40HQ, so the effective per-unit freight is 26% higher than the arithmetic suggests.
Worked example
Take a 40HQ at USD 3,800. A chair loading 252 units costs about USD 15 per unit in ocean freight at full load. The same container at 200 units costs USD 19. A chair loading 458 units costs about USD 8.30 at full load. On a chair that sells for a few hundred dollars, that difference is a margin decision, not a rounding error.
What to do about it
- Quote container quantity, not “about a container”.
- Mix models to fill the box — a rollator loading 1,032 units is a natural filler alongside 300 power chairs.
- Ask for the loading plan before you pay the deposit, not after the goods are at the port.
The freight calculator on the home page runs this arithmetic on our published carton data. Put your own rate in — we do not quote shipping, and any supplier who does is marking it up.