The Secret of calculating Air freight cost

If your company is airfreighting quiet often and using an air freight forwarder, you should have received a rate sheet, usually split into regions.

Generally speaking each region will have four methods of calculating the total charge, maybe a fifth or sixth for a country or airport with additional handling or customs requirements.

An airfreight charge per kilogram, war/fuel surcharge, fixed local charge per shipment and variable local charge per kilogram will typically be the basis for calculating the cost of freight. Additional factors may come into play including origin terminal handling charges or document fees.

Information the freight forwarder will require to quote the shipment composes of the outer carton CBM (Carton dimensions - L x W x H), Volumetric Weight (Outer Carton CBM x 167), Gross Weight of Carton & the number of cartons.

The greater of the Volumetric Weight and the Gross Weight will equal the chargeable weight which will then be plugged into the freight forwarders rate sheet.

For further detail, e.g. calculating the freight per unit cost if say you were shipping 100 units per carton, a units per carton column can be added into the formula.

Click to Download the excel spreadsheet I use to calculate airfreight cost on a day-to-day basis.