Freight is often the second largest line in a landed cost calculation, and it is the line buyers control least well. Most of the avoidable cost comes from buying on the wrong Incoterm or leaving a container part full.
1. Incoterms: what you are actually buying
- EXW - you collect from the factory. Cheapest on paper, but you also inherit inland haulage, export documents and loading, which is rarely worth it for a first order.
- FOB - we deliver to the port of loading and clear export; you control the ocean leg and the destination charges. This is the most common choice for buyers with their own forwarder, and the one that gives the clearest visibility of freight cost.
- CIF - we arrange and pay for the ocean freight and insurance to your port. Convenient when you do not have a forwarder, but the destination charges and inland leg are still yours.
- DDP - delivered to your door with duty paid. Simplest to budget, most expensive per unit, and not available to every destination.
Our quotations are normally issued FOB Ningbo or Shanghai, and we can quote CIF or DDP on request.
2. Cartons: the part that decides how much fits
Wooden toys are dense, so a container reaches its weight limit before it runs out of space more often than people expect. Carton dimensions are chosen to stack in whole numbers across the container floor, and each product specification sheet states the pieces per carton and the cartons per 20 foot or 40 foot container.
What we check before loading: carton bursting strength for the stacking height, no empty space inside the carton (void fill or a fitted insert), and the shipping marks printed on two adjacent panels.
3. Moisture and wood
Wood moves with humidity. A container crossing the equator can swing between very humid and very dry conditions, so cartons usually carry a moisture barrier liner and a desiccant sachet for long sea legs, and solid wood parts are kiln dried to a controlled moisture content at the factory. Skipping this step is how a shipment arrives with warped puzzle boards and a complaint rather than a re-order.
4. Filling the container
Because freight is charged per container rather than per piece, the unit cost of a part-filled container is much higher than a full one. If an order is within about ten percent of filling a container, adding pieces usually costs less per unit than shipping short. The trade-off is working capital tied up in stock, so the calculation belongs in your own planning, not in ours.
5. Documentation that travels with the goods
A sea shipment moves with a commercial invoice, a packing list and the bill of lading. Depending on the destination you may also need a certificate of origin, the conformity documents for the market, and the test reports. /knowledges/179.html lists the US set, /knowledges/180.html covers what marketplaces ask for on top, and our guide to importing wooden toys from China sets out the whole document chain in order.
For a quotation that includes freight, send the delivery city and port through the contact form. For stock items the container quantity is already fixed - see the wholesale range.
Carton dimensions, weights and shipping marks for the current range are on our download page.
The packaging the toy is sold in, as opposed to the carton it travels in - retail box, mailer or plain carton - is covered in wooden toy packaging.
Carton planning matters most on the bulkiest items, such as the kids playground equipment range, where volume is lost to air.
Flat-packed items, which is how the play kitchens ship, are costed on volume rather than on weight.
What the shipping terms sit on top of is covered in what drives the price of a wooden toy, and the delivery-window side in supply for retail chains.
Carton size and packing quantity are the two figures that decide the freight line in a quotation, and both are published item by item: our wooden toy carton sizes and container loading table lists carton volume, pieces per carton, gross and net weight and the 20 ft and 40 ft quantities for 45 items.
Items that do not nest, such as the rocking horses, are where the carton figure moves the freight line most.
The item that pushes the carton arithmetic hardest is the wooden doll house range, which ships bulky even when it ships flat.