Ocean freight itself
The base cost of moving your container from the export port to your destination port, priced per container for FCL or per cubic metre for LCL. This is the number that fluctuates most with fuel prices and seasonal demand.
Origin and destination charges
Terminal handling, documentation and customs clearance fees apply at both ends of the journey — often listed separately from the freight rate itself, and easy to miss if you're only comparing the headline freight number between quotes.
Insurance
Marine cargo insurance is usually optional but strongly worth including for furniture, given how much value can be lost to a single mishandled container. It's typically priced as a small percentage of the cargo's declared value.
What's commonly left out of a quote
Inland transport from your destination port to your own warehouse, import duties, and any destination-country compliance costs are rarely included in a freight forwarder's quote and need to be budgeted separately.
Why the same shipment quotes differently
Two forwarders can quote materially different numbers for the same container, and rarely because one is overcharging. Rates depend on the sailing selected, whether the quote is drawn from a contracted allocation or spot space, how much handling the cargo needs, and whether destination charges are estimated or fixed.
For LCL the basis matters even more. You are billed on chargeable volume, which is the greater of actual measurement and a weight-to-volume conversion — so a dense furniture consignment can be charged on weight rather than the space it visibly occupies. Ask which basis a quote uses before comparing it with another.
Peak season moves rates more than distance does
Ocean freight is a supply-and-demand market. Rates out of South China to Southeast Asia rise sharply in the run-up to the pre-holiday shipping peak, and space becomes genuinely scarce rather than merely expensive: containers get rolled to later sailings even after booking.
That is why booking early is about more than price. On an order with a fixed opening date, a container rolled a fortnight before Lunar New Year is not a cost problem — it is a schedule problem. Build booking lead time into the timeline rather than treating freight as the final step.
Demurrage and detention are where budgets quietly die
Two charges punish delay, and they are different things. Demurrage accrues while the container sits inside the terminal after free time expires. Detention accrues while you hold the container outside the terminal — including at your own warehouse while you unload it.
Free time is typically measured in days and can be negotiated by your broker, and the per-day charge climbs steeply once it runs out. The practical protection is to schedule delivery for a day you can genuinely receive and unload, and to know your free time before the vessel arrives rather than after.
Free tool: work out what your order actually lands at per unit with the furniture landed cost calculator — FOB through to delivered.
The quote stack: what you are actually paying for
A furniture freight quote stacks roughly six layers: ex-factory transport to port, export customs and documentation, ocean freight (the big variable — by FCL vs LCL, route and season), destination port and handling charges, import duty plus GST/VAT, and inland delivery to your warehouse. The ocean leg gets the attention but the destination charges and tax base surprise more buyers. Read FOB pricing and Incoterms together with this page, then model your order in the landed-cost calculator.
FCL vs LCL: the cost crossover for furniture
FCL (a full container you fill) wins above roughly half a 20ft box; LCL (shared space) suits top-up lines and samples but costs more per cubic metre and adds handling risk for upholstered pieces. Consolidating several factories into one FCL at our Foshan warehouse is usually the cheapest per-unit outcome — see how consolidation works and the full comparison in LCL vs FCL. Seasonality matters: pre-CNY and pre-holiday peaks lift rates, so plan around Chinese New Year and peak production windows.
A worked example: $10,000 FOB to Singapore
$10,000 FOB + $1,200 freight and insurance = $11,200 CIF. Furniture into Singapore attracts $0 duty, so 9% GST = $1,008 — $12,208 landed before local delivery. Every other market adds its own duty per HS code plus local tax (Vietnam 10% VAT, Thailand 7%, Indonesia 11% PPN, Philippines 12%, Malaysia 10% SST). Duty follows the HS code per line, not the category name — full detail in import duties across SE Asia and transit context in shipping times.