Cost each quote to your warehouse door
Factory price plus freight, duty, border fees, insurance and inland delivery. Cheapest at the port is often not cheapest landed.
TOOL: the landed cost sheetNUMBER: freight, duty, fees
Land every quote before comparing any: factory price, plus freight, plus duty on the right base, plus border fees, insurance and delivery to your warehouse. The first order costing sheet does this three ways side by side, and the freight reckoner turns any box rate into a cost per kilogram. For a first look without opening a file, the landed cost quick check does the same sum on the page, with the base duty, the United States extra layer for your origin and the VAT filled in, and the payment terms tool beside it prices the credit period a factory offers.
A worked example, so the shape is visible. Say a t-shirt is quoted at $3.00 FOB Chattogram and weighs 0.18 kg packed; both are placeholders, put your own numbers in the sheet. To New York, every layer the United States charges, one line each, each rate read from the same file the duty page prints from, with the date it was read:
- Factory price: $3.00 FOB Chattogram, a placeholder.
- Sea freight: at a placeholder box rate of $2,500 for a forty foot container loaded with 12,000 kg, freight is about 20.8 cents per kg, so 0.18 kg is 3.8 cents on the shirt.
- Base duty: tariff line 6109.10.00, knitted cotton t-shirts, at 16.5% of the FOB price, read 23 August 2026; 16.5% of $3.00 is 49.5 cents.
- The extra United States layer on goods from Bangladesh: heading 9903.05.26, +10% on top of the base rate, read 2 September 2026; 10% of $3.00 is 30 cents. The other countries on that list, and the exclusions, are on the duty page.
- Merchandise Processing Fee: 0.3464% of entered value, about 1 cent on $3.00. It has a floor and a ceiling per entry, so it is charged per entry and not per line, and consolidating shipments into one entry caps it; confirm the current floor and ceiling with your broker, because they were revised for the US fiscal year starting October 2025 and revise again in October 2026.
- Harbor Maintenance Fee: 0.125% of cargo value, uncapped, on ocean freight through a listed US port only, not on air, truck or rail; about 0.4 of a cent on $3.00.
- Cotton research and promotion assessment: About 1.2 to 1.6 cents per kilogram, charged by the ten digit line on cotton goods, so look up your own line; on 0.18 kg that is about 0.2 of a cent to 0.3 of a cent.
Add them up. $3.00 plus 3.8 cents freight, plus 49.5 cents base duty, plus 30 cents on the extra layer, plus 1 cent and 0.4 of a cent in the two border fees, plus 0.2 of a cent to 0.3 of a cent of cotton assessment, is about $3.85 a shirt landed at New York, before insurance and delivery to your warehouse. To Hamburg: same freight, but the EU charges its 12.00% (read 23 August 2026) on the price including freight, so 12.00% of $3.04 is about 36.5 cents, landed about $3.40, and import VAT is then charged on top of the duty, cash you recover if you are VAT registered. Same shirt, two honest landed costs, and the difference is all in duty rules you can read on the duty page.
Now the whole sum, on a real order. Two of the six worked cases are garments and both stop at this step: a Dallas importer buying t-shirts out of Bangladesh, and a Dutch brand buying hoodies into Rotterdam. Each one is costed line by line to the warehouse door, out of the same files this page reads.
Worked case 1: A Dallas retailer wants 4,000 cotton T-shirts United States. Costed to the warehouse door, every line shown. Opens here.
“What will 4,000 printed cotton tees cost me delivered to my Dallas warehouse, and from where?”
Knitted cotton T-shirt, heading 6109.10, made in Chattogram, shipped by sea to a US port and trucked to Dallas. The United States charges duty on the FOB price, so freight and insurance sit outside the duty base.
That total is 12 lines. $3,449.48 of it comes from the duty rates, border charges and freight index the site holds, each printed with the day it was read; the other $13,700.00 is round placeholders you replace with your own quotes. The full case shows every line, what it was worked out from, and what the site cannot tell you.
Open case 1 in full, line by line or see all six cases side by side.
Worked case 5: A Dutch brand buys 6,000 cotton hoodies European Union. Costed to the warehouse door, every line shown. Opens here.
“6,000 brushed fleece hoodies from Bangladesh into Rotterdam. Landed, in euros?”
Knitted cotton hooded pullover, heading 6110.20, from Chattogram to Rotterdam. The Union charges duty on the customs value, which includes freight and insurance, and Bangladesh enters free under Everything But Arms when the origin paperwork is right.
That total is 8 lines. $923.04 of it comes from the duty rates, border charges and freight index the site holds, each printed with the day it was read; the other $55,950.00 is round placeholders you replace with your own quotes. The full case shows every line, what it was worked out from, and what the site cannot tell you.
Open case 5 in full, line by line or see all six cases side by side.
Check it outside, at the source:
- Freightos Baltic Index (opens in a new tab) daily rates on twelve named lanes, so you can watch your own lane into the peak booking window
- Drewry World Container Index (opens in a new tab) the weekly composite most contracts reference, free as a headline figure
- Shanghai Shipping Exchange, SCFI and CCFI (opens in a new tab) the Asian export view, which is where the run up to Chinese New Year shows first
- IMF PortWatch (opens in a new tab) satellite port call counts, for the week Chattogram or the Suez transits stop behaving and your booking window moves
Tools for this step
- Your first order, landed three ways Excel
Land one order in the United States, Europe and the Gulf side by side, each market charging duty on its own base, and see why the same shirt costs three different amounts.
- Landed cost, quick check
Type a factory price and a freight figure, pick the market and the origin, and read the duty, the US extra layer and the VAT on the right base, on the page, before opening any sheet.
- Freight reckoner Excel
Turn the box rate you were actually quoted into the cents per kilogram that belongs in your costing, at the load you will really achieve.
- Box rate to cents per kilo
Read your quoted box rate down the side and your realistic load across the top, and take the freight cost per kilo off the grid.
- Cost of payment terms
Put the deposit, the days and your own borrowing rate in and read what the term costs you in interest, so two quotes on two different terms compare on one line.
Every tool for this guide, grouped by what you are trying to do, is on the tools page.
