Air Freight vs. Sea Freight: Which One is Right for Your Business?

When some company have to decide between an air or sea shipment they have to think about transit time required and target rate.

As soon as is clear when cargo have to arrive at destination and what is the maximum amount of money will be spend in the transport companies can decide wether they want their cargo to be shipped by air or sea.

Normally cargo is send by sea.  The cargo is send by air are spare parts, urgent shipments that will cost more money for the company to stop production because of lack of commodity.

Also there are cargo that are time sensitive such as pershiable and pharma.

For sea shipments cargo can be less than a container load (LCL) or full container load (FCL). 

For LCL we will need total pieces, kg, measures and weigth.

For FCL we will need container type or cbm and kg to help corporations to choose the best container for their order.

Sometimes LCL and FCL have a minimum so air freight might be a good option.

If are some pallets you can check both air and LCL and compare rates and transit time.

But if cargo is more than 10 pallets this will be FCL or a full plane depending on the measures and weight.

There are different types of planes and not all the airlines accept all type of height and some offers different awbls for the same order, so this will result on split awbls /bookings.

In any case, please , contact us to advise you which transport mode is better for your cargo as per your dead line requirements.

Commodities for fairs, expositions are good for air shipments since cargo can not be delayed, but it is an order that you have around 30 days to arrive at pod you can check sea option.

LCL will be longer than FCL since once container arrives at POD (port of destination) it was to be cleared, unloaded in consolidator warehouse and coordinate the deliver. It is slower the process as if it was a FCL only for the same consignee/shipper.

For more information regarding this topic do not hesitate to contact our sales team to assist you.

World Ocean Cargo Iberica.