Freight Quote Breakdown: Read a China Quote Line by Line

A quotation prices a scope, not a shipment

Three quotes for the same container can land far apart for reasons unrelated to how well each forwarder buys space. One stops at the port of discharge. One bills per revenue ton with a rounding rule in a footnote. One rests on a rate that expires before your cargo is finished. Line up the biggest number on each and you have compared nothing.

So here is a China export quotation taken apart in the order it appears on the page: origin block, main leg, destination block. Two questions apply to every line. Who actually sets this amount? And which of three kinds of money is it: passed straight through from a third party, fixed by a carrier or government tariff, or the forwarder’s own margin? The third kind is what this industry does not usually print, and it is the only kind that moves when you push on it.

The header decides more than any line item

Where the quote starts and where it stops

Find the two endpoints before you read a number. “Shanghai to Los Angeles” names two cities, not two endpoints. CY to CY, factory door to CY, CFS to door, port to an Amazon fulfilment centre: each adds or removes a whole block of work. Where a door is involved, write the endpoint as a postcode. The Incoterms rules on your purchase order settle who owes what between you and the supplier; they say nothing about where the forwarder’s scope begins. Two different boundaries, constantly assumed to be one.

The unit you are being billed in

FCL is quoted per container; check the payload limit and whether an overweight surcharge waits on the road at destination. LCL is usually per revenue ton, one cubic metre or 1,000 kg whichever is greater, subject to a minimum. Air uses chargeable weight, the greater of gross and volumetric, and volumetric depends entirely on the divisor. Air freight conventionally applies 6,000 cm³/kg and express couriers commonly apply 5,000, but a divisor is a tariff term that can change, so read the one printed on your quote and run your cartons through a chargeable weight calculator. On light, bulky cargo the divisor matters more than the rate per kilo.

Then ask about rounding. Per 0.1 cbm or per whole cbm, per 0.5 kg or per kilo, on each carton or on the shipment total. Across a hundred light cartons that is a line of its own.

Validity, and the sentence that quietly undoes the rate

Ocean rates are commonly revised at the start and middle of the month, and rate increases and peak season surcharges are announced against those dates, so validity matters as much as the total. Ask which surcharges are fixed until then and which are stated “as at date of shipment”, because the second group is not really quoted. Then find the clause about space and equipment availability: standard, honest, and a reminder that the price is firm while the slot is not.

Block one: what happens before the box leaves China

Buyers question this block least, because under FOB terms the supplier pays it and it vanishes into the unit price.

• Pickup and inland trucking. Priced by truck size and distance to the yard or consolidation warehouse. What causes arguments later is waiting time at the factory, weekend or night gate moves, and whether there is a loading dock.
• Export customs declaration. Charged per declaration, with more once you pass a stated number of HS lines. If the commodity falls under statutory commodity inspection in China, that is a further step before filing, with its own fee and lead time.
• Export rights, when the supplier has none. Plenty of Chinese manufacturers sell domestically and hold no export rights, so the declaration goes out under another company’s licence and shows up as a modest line here. Worth knowing, because the shipper of record is then not your supplier.
• Origin terminal handling (OTHC). A carrier tariff at the load port, broadly the same for everyone on that carrier there. A useful control: if two quotes disagree on OTHC, either they are on different carriers or one has put something on top.
• Documentation, B/L and telex release. The forwarder’s own charges for issuing the transport document and releasing cargo without originals. Ask whether it is per B/L or per shipment, and what an amendment costs.
• Seal, VGM and advance manifest filings. A container seal, the verified gross mass required under SOLAS, and AMS for the United States, ENS for Europe, ACI for Canada or AFR for Japan. Filings go in ahead of loading, and amendments can draw penalties set by the customs authority rather than by your forwarder. Ask the amendment cost.
• ISF, for US ocean imports. The importer’s filing, often made by the destination agent and sometimes billed at origin. Wherever it is billed, the responsibility sits with the importer of record.
• CFS handling for LCL. Per cbm at the consolidation warehouse. Palletising, wrapping and heat treatment or fumigation for solid wood packing under ISPM 15 are usually separate lines. On wood packing, customs looks for the stamp.
• Dangerous goods. A DG declaration, document review and a carrier surcharge. Batteries and anything with a flashpoint need declaring at quotation stage, not at the gate.

Block two: the main leg

Base ocean freight is the line everyone compares, which is exactly why it is the least informative one on the page. Because buyers shop it, it gets compressed hardest, and in a competitive quote it can sit at or near the forwarder’s own buy rate with the shortfall recovered further down. A base rate well below the others is information about the rest of the quote rather than a bargain.

Around it sit the surcharge families: bunker and low sulphur, currency adjustment, peak season, general rate increases, congestion, war risk or routing contingency, canal transit, overweight, and emissions charges on Europe-bound cargo. The carrier publishes these and the forwarder passes them on. What differs between quotes is not the amount of any one surcharge but how much has been folded into a single all-in figure and how much is left floating. The freight glossary covers the codes. The operational question is narrower: is this all-in for the ocean leg, and which components are locked until the validity date?

Air works the same way with fewer parts: a rate per chargeable kilo, fuel and security surcharges also per kilo, screening and build-up. Unless stated otherwise an air rate is airport to airport.

Block three: the charges that arrive after the ship does

This block causes more disputes than the other two, because a quote can be complete, correct and still stop before it. A rate ending at the port of discharge is not hiding these charges; it is not quoting them, and the invoices arrive anyway.

• Customs entry. A broker fee per entry plus a charge per HTS line beyond an included count. Import twenty SKUs on one entry and that count matters. The customs clearance step has more failure points than fees.
• Customs bond. Either a single transaction bond for that entry or a continuous bond covering a year. A continuous bond amount is derived from duties, taxes and fees paid over a prior period under a CBP formula with a floor, so check CBP’s current guidance rather than a quote. Ask which type and whose bond, because one in another name means the entries are not filed against yours.
• Duty, taxes and federal fees. Set by regulation, not by anyone quoting you. Merchandise processing and harbour maintenance fees follow their own rules and tariff programmes change, so the reliable answer runs through your own HS classification against the current tariff schedule. Anyone who states a duty figure without asking your HS code is guessing.
• Disbursement or advance fee. The forwarder fronts duty and fees to customs and charges a percentage with a minimum for carrying the money. A real service and a real cost, negotiable. Get both numbers in writing.
• Customs examination. A scan, a tail-gate look, or a full intensive exam at a centralised examination station. You pay the station’s handling, the drayage there and back, and any demurrage accruing while the box is held. Nobody can quote this ahead of time; ask whether the bill is passed through at cost.
• Drayage and equipment. Base trucking by zone plus fuel, chassis usage per day, pre-pull if the box must leave the terminal before your warehouse is ready, and driver waiting time past the free hours. In the United States the chassis usually does not come with the container, so chassis days are a real line, and a live unload rather than a drop-and-pick changes that count.
• Demurrage and per diem. Demurrage runs while the box sits at the terminal, per diem while you hold it outside. Free time is a booking term, so ask for it before the cargo moves rather than argue afterwards.
• Deconsolidation and final delivery. For LCL, deconsolidation and storage past free time. For delivery, appointment scheduling at large distribution centres, liftgate, residential access and unloading labour.

Put one of three labels on every line

With the lines in front of you, sort each one into a bucket. The bucket tells you what to do with it.

Pass-through. A third party invoiced the forwarder and the amount is re-billed: an exam station bill, a government fee, a fumigation certificate. A forwarder may keep its buy rates confidential, but there is no good reason to refuse you sight of a pass-through document.

Tariff or statutory. A carrier, terminal or government sets the amount and no negotiating changes it. What can change is whether it applies at all, which is a function of routing, carrier, entry type and packing.

The forwarder’s own. The spread on the main leg, documentation and handling fees, the disbursement percentage, anything labelled service or admin. This is where the business earns its living and it is the genuinely negotiable part. Knowing which lines these are is worth more than knowing the total.

Where the margin usually sits

None of this is fraud. It is ordinary commercial behaviour, legible once you know the shapes.

The headline rate carries the shopping, so recovery happens where you cannot benchmark: documentation, handling, disbursement percentages, the destination block. Units do quiet work too, and a fee charged per document when three are issued is a different number from the same fee per shipment. Minimums and rounding do the same job on small LCL and air consignments. Charges incurred in RMB and invoiced in USD convert at somebody’s rate on somebody’s date, and asking which is fair.

The most common one is omission. The cheapest quote in a stack is often the one with the fewest lines, and missing lines do not become free by being left off. Count the lines before you compare totals, and read them against how shipping costs from China break down.

What to send back

You do not need a negotiating script. Four sentences open up most quotations.

• “Please confirm the exact start and end points, with postcodes where there is a door move.”
• “Which lines are passed through at cost, and which include your handling?”
• “Is the ocean leg all-in until the validity date, and which surcharges are still floating?”
• “Please add the destination lines you have not quoted, as estimates, and mark them as estimates.”

How a forwarder answers tells you more than the total does. A quote that returns with the missing lines added, honestly flagged as estimates, beats one that stays cheap by staying short. If you want something to hold this checklist against, send the cargo details and two endpoints and get a freight quote from China with the three blocks kept apart, so you can sort every line yourself.