Moving goods across borders sounds intimidating \u2014 customs, containers, incoterms \u2014 but the mechanics are simpler than the jargon suggests. Here’s what first-time international shippers need to know.<\/p>\n
The workhorses are the 20ft container (about 33 m\u00b3 \u2014 a two-to-three bedroom home) and the 40ft (67 m\u00b3). If you can’t fill one, ask for groupage<\/strong> (LCL \u2014 less than container load): your goods share a container and you pay per cubic metre.<\/p>\n Quotes come in flavours: door-to-door (carrier handles everything), port-to-port (you arrange both ends), and the hybrids. First-timers should almost always pay the premium for door-to-door \u2014 the local haulage legs and terminal handling are where DIY plans go wrong.<\/p>\n Three documents do the heavy lifting: the bill of lading<\/strong> (your contract and receipt), the packing list<\/strong> (every item, per box), and the customs declaration<\/strong>. For household moves within Europe, transfer-of-residence relief usually means no duty \u2014 but the paperwork still has to be filed.<\/p>\n UK\u2013Europe short-sea routes run 2\u20137 days; transatlantic 2\u20134 weeks; UK\u2013Australia 6\u201310 weeks. Prices move with season and fuel, which is exactly why competitive bidding beats a single quote: carriers with space on a scheduled sailing will undercut the rate card to fill it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Moving goods across borders sounds intimidating \u2014 customs, containers, incoterms \u2014 but the mechanics are simpler than the jargon suggests. Here’s what first-time international shippers need to know. Container sizes, decoded The workhorses are the 20ft container (about 33 m\u00b3 \u2014 a two-to-three bedroom home) and the 40ft (67 m\u00b3). If you can’t fill one, ask for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shipping-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sitemile.fr\/shipme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sitemile.fr\/shipme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sitemile.fr\/shipme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sitemile.fr\/shipme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sitemile.fr\/shipme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sitemile.fr\/shipme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sitemile.fr\/shipme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sitemile.fr\/shipme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sitemile.fr\/shipme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sitemile.fr\/shipme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Door, port, or somewhere in between<\/h2>\n
Paperwork that actually matters<\/h2>\n
Timing and cost expectations<\/h2>\n