The questions we answer every day.

Size and how it is handled, not urgency. Express covers documents and parcels moving individually, door to door, tracked to a signature. Freight covers pallets, containers and anything that needs a loading bay rather than a doorstep.

If you can carry it, it is almost certainly express. If it needs a forklift, it is freight. See what we provide.

Work backwards from the deadline, not forwards from the price. Air is fastest and costs most per kilo. Ocean is cheapest at volume and slowest. Rail sits between the two on land corridors, and road handles the first and last leg of nearly everything.

Most lanes end up using two. Compare the modes properly.

Yes. A collection can be booked from any address you nominate — your supplier, a manufacturer, a third-party warehouse. We need a contact name and number at that address, the goods packed and ready at the agreed time, and clarity on who is responsible for export clearance.

That last point is decided by the incoterm on your purchase order, not by who happens to be standing next to the pallet. If your supplier is expecting you to arrange export formalities and you are expecting them to, the collection will happen and the shipment will then sit. Confirm it before booking.

Usually one of four things, and all four are standard across the industry rather than anything irregular: chargeable weight differing from actual weight, a weight break you fell just under, surcharges that move independently of the base rate, or an incoterm that put a cost on you that you expected the other party to carry.

We itemise surcharges rather than folding them into one number, so you can see what changed between one month and the next.

Freight is billed on the greater of two numbers: what the shipment actually weighs, and a figure derived from the space it occupies. Aircraft and trailers run out of room long before they run out of lift, so bulky-but-light cargo is priced on volume.

It is why a box of cushions costs more to fly than the scales suggest — and why trimming an oversized carton down can cut a bill more than removing items would.

Yes — volume is one factor, but rarely the one that helps most. Predictability, lane direction, weight profile and how straightforward an account is to run all move a rate too, which is how a smaller shipper sometimes beats a larger one on the same route.

We do not publish a minimum volume or spend, and we do not turn small shippers away. A business sending eight high-value consignments a month is frequently a better fit than one sending occasional pallets.

Send roughly three months of history and you will get a real comparison rather than a percentage. How business accounts work.

Whoever the incoterm on the order says. Those three letters decide who arranges transport, who clears the goods, who pays duty and where risk passes from seller to buyer.

Getting them wrong is the most common reason a shipment costs more than expected, and it is very difficult to fix after the goods have moved. Confirm the term before the purchase order is placed, not after. More on customs.

Nearly always one of four things: the commodity code does not match what was actually sent, the documents disagree with each other, the declared value or origin needs substantiating, or the goods are controlled and need a licence nobody applied for.

Each has a different fix and a very different cost of waiting, which is why the first thing we do is find out which one it is rather than simply chasing.

You are legally responsible for the declaration, but you do not have to work it out alone. Our brokers classify against the actual product and its intended use rather than copying forward whatever the last shipment used — which is where long-standing errors usually come from.

Where a classification is genuinely arguable, most authorities will issue a binding ruling you can rely on. Slower than guessing and far cheaper than being wrong for two years.

Enter your tracking number on the tracking page. You will see milestones from collection through to delivery, and where the carrier reports it, the proof of delivery once it has arrived.

A card is left and the recipient is notified with the options open to them — reattempt on a day they choose, divert to a neighbour or a collection point, or hold for collection.

How many attempts are made, and how long a parcel is held before going back, are set against the service rather than fixed across the board — a time-critical medical consignment and a routine parcel should not be handled identically. Both are confirmed in writing when your service is agreed, and shown on the tracking for any individual shipment.

More on last mile delivery.

Yes. Every shipment has a tracking reference you can pass on, and the recipient can follow it without an account or a login.

Sending it proactively is worth the thirty seconds. Most "where is my order" messages land with your support team rather than ours, and a link answers them before they are sent. If you want tracking presented under your own branding rather than ours, ask — what is possible depends on the service and on how your orders reach us.

No. You can send a one-off shipment without one — get a quote, book it, pay for that shipment alone.

An account earns its place once you are shipping regularly: it holds your addresses and saved lanes, replaces payment-per-shipment with consolidated invoicing, and gives you a named contact instead of whoever answers. If you are sending something once, do not open an account for it.

Send roughly three months of shipping history — lanes, weights and how often. We price your actual routes against what you pay now and show the difference line by line, including when the honest answer is that changing would not save you enough to be worth the disruption.

Request an account.

One-off shipments are paid at booking. Business accounts are invoiced on a consolidated cycle rather than per consignment, with credit terms available subject to application and the usual checks — what is offered depends on trading history and volume, and is confirmed in writing before the account goes live.

If you need invoicing in a particular currency, or against a purchase order number, say so at setup. It is trivial at that point and awkward afterwards.

Not automatically, and this is the most misunderstood point in freight.

Every carrier accepts a limited liability for loss or damage, but under the international conventions that govern transport, that liability is capped by the weight of the goods, not their value. For most cargo the cap works out far below what the shipment is actually worth, sometimes by an order of magnitude. It can also fall away entirely in certain circumstances — inadequate packing being the common one.

Separate cargo insurance covers the value you declare. We can arrange marine and all-risk cover through licensed providers on request, and it is worth having for anything you could not comfortably absorb the loss of. If you already hold an open policy of your own, tell us and we will note it on the booking.

One thing to avoid: under-declaring value to reduce duty also reduces what you can claim. The two figures have to match, and people discover this at the worst possible moment.

Tell us immediately. Notification deadlines under the transport conventions are short and they start running from delivery, not from when you got round to opening the box.

If damage is visible on arrival, note it on the delivery record before signing. If you find it later, stop unpacking and contact us the same day.

Then keep everything — outer carton, internal packing, the goods and the pallet. A claim without the packaging is very hard to support, because packing adequacy is the first thing any insurer examines. Photograph the item where it sits before moving it, and have the commercial invoice, packing list and transport document to hand.

Call +1 858-428-7703 at any hour and we will confirm what applies to your consignment and handle the submission with the carrier or insurer.

Call us rather than waiting for the tracking to update. Most delays have a cause we can already see and sometimes act on — a rolled booking, a customs query, a missed connection — and the options narrow the longer nobody is chasing it.

The line is open around the clock: +1 858-428-7703.