Answers
Straight answers about air, ocean and land freight, customs clearance, transit times and tracking. Still stuck? Our team replies to every message.
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We move cargo by air, sea and road, and handle everything around it: customs clearance, warehousing and storage, and end-to-end supply chain management. If you are not sure which mode fits, send us the weight, the dimensions and your deadline and we will tell you which one is actually cheaper for that shipment.
Yes. Our instant quote calculator returns an indicative rate from our published rate cards as soon as you enter the service, the route, the weight and the dimensions. It is an estimate rather than a booking — the final price confirms surcharges, customs handling and any special requirements.
Transit time depends on the lane, the mode and the customs process at destination, so we confirm it on your quote rather than publishing one number for everything. As a rule of thumb: air freight is the fastest option, road freight suits regional moves across the GCC, and ocean freight is the slowest but by far the cheapest per kilo once the volume is large.
Enter your air waybill or tracking number on our tracking page and you will see every scan and milestone — pickup, departure, customs, arrival and delivery — as it is recorded. Customers with a portal account get the same timeline alongside their invoices and shipping documents.
For most shipments: a commercial invoice, a packing list, and the transport document — an air waybill for air freight or a bill of lading for ocean freight. Depending on the goods and the destination you may also need a certificate of origin, and regulated goods can require permits or licences. Send us the details before booking and we will tell you exactly what your shipment needs.
FCL (Full Container Load) means you book a whole container, so your cargo travels on its own and is usually quicker to release at destination. LCL (Less than Container Load) means your cargo shares a container with other shipments and you pay for the space you use — cheaper for small volumes, at the cost of extra time for consolidation at origin and deconsolidation on arrival.
By whichever is greater. The industry calls it chargeable weight. Air freight compares the actual weight against the volumetric weight, calculated as length x width x height in centimetres divided by 6000. Ocean LCL is normally charged per cubic metre or per 1,000 kg, whichever is higher. That is why a light but bulky pallet can cost more to move than a small, heavy crate.
Yes — we offer certified dangerous goods handling on air freight. DG shipments have to be correctly classified, packed, labelled and declared before an airline will accept them, so tell us the UN number and class as early as you can and we will confirm what the route and the carrier allow.
Carrier liability and cargo insurance are not the same thing. Every carrier’s liability is capped by international convention and is calculated from the weight of the goods, not their value, so it rarely covers what a shipment is actually worth. Separate all-risk cargo insurance is available and we recommend it for anything high value — ask for it when you request your quote.
A freight forwarder arranges transport rather than operating it: they book space with airlines, shipping lines and hauliers, consolidate smaller shipments into larger loads to reach better rates, prepare the transport documents, file customs declarations, and coordinate collection, storage and final delivery at both ends. The practical value is single accountability — one party owns the shipment end to end, instead of you separately managing an airline, a terminal, a customs broker and a trucking company. A forwarder is also the party that knows which carriers genuinely serve a given lane, what that route’s real constraints are, and which documents a specific destination will insist on.
Air freight is far faster and less exposed to damage and theft, but costs substantially more per kilogram and is charged on chargeable weight — the greater of actual and volumetric weight — so light, bulky cargo is penalised. Ocean freight costs a fraction of that per unit and is the practical option for large, heavy or low-value consignments, at the price of a much longer transit and working capital tied up in goods that are in motion for weeks. The usual test is value density: the higher the value of the goods relative to their weight and volume, and the tighter the deadline, the more air wins; high volume, low value and a flexible date favour sea. Many shippers split an order, sending the urgent portion by air and the balance by sea.
An Air Waybill (AWB) is a contract of carriage and a receipt for the goods, and it is non-negotiable: the cargo is released to the consignee named on it once they identify themselves, and no original paper has to be surrendered. An ocean Bill of Lading can be issued as a negotiable document of title, in which case the carrier may require an original signed copy to be handed over before the container is released at destination. That difference has real operational consequences — original bills of lading travelling by courier are a common reason for cargo sitting at a port — which is why a telex release or a non-negotiable sea waybill is often used when there is no payment reason to hold title.
Incoterms are standard three-letter trade terms published by the International Chamber of Commerce that define, for a sale of goods, exactly where the seller’s responsibility ends and the buyer’s begins. They settle three things: who arranges and pays for each leg of transport, the precise point at which risk of loss or damage passes from seller to buyer, and who is responsible for export and import clearance. They do not transfer ownership, set payment terms, or govern what happens if the contract is breached — those belong in the sales contract itself. The current edition is Incoterms 2020, and a contract should name both the edition and the exact place, as in "FOB Jebel Ali (Incoterms 2020)", because the named place is what makes the rule operative.
EXW (Ex Works) is the minimum seller obligation: the goods are simply made available at the seller’s premises and the buyer handles loading, export clearance, all transport and import clearance. FOB (Free On Board) applies to sea and inland waterway shipments only — the seller clears the goods for export and delivers them on board the vessel, and risk passes to the buyer at that point. CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight) is also sea-only and adds the seller paying freight to the named destination port plus insurance, but risk still passes when the goods are loaded at origin, and the cover the rule obliges the seller to buy is only the minimum level, so a buyer who wants all-risk protection should arrange it separately. DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) is the opposite extreme to EXW: the seller delivers to the buyer’s door with import clearance completed and duties and taxes paid, which is convenient for the buyer but exposes the seller to a customs regime they may not be registered in.
An HS code is the international customs classification for a product, maintained by the World Customs Organization. Its first six digits are identical in every country that applies the system, and individual countries append further digits for their own tariff and statistical purposes. That code determines the duty rate your goods attract, whether they require a licence, permit or certificate, whether they face restrictions or prohibitions, and whether they qualify for a reduced rate under a preferential trade agreement. Getting it wrong is not a formality — it leads to overpaid duty, or to penalties and delays when the error surfaces — and the declarant remains responsible for the classification even when a supplier suggested it.
A customs declaration is filed electronically describing the goods, their value, their country of origin and their tariff classification, supported by the commercial invoice, the packing list and the transport document. Customs then assesses the declaration, calculates the duty and tax payable, and may select the shipment for scanning or a physical examination before releasing it. Most delays are not customs being slow — they are paperwork: a vague goods description, a mismatch between the invoice and the packing list, a wrong tariff code, or a missing permit or certificate of origin. Reviewing documents before the cargo arrives is far cheaper than correcting them once it is sitting in a terminal accruing storage charges.
Most goods imported into the UAE are assessed customs duty at 5% of the CIF value (cost, insurance and freight) under the GCC Common Customs Tariff, plus 5% import VAT. Some categories are treated very differently — tobacco and alcohol carry substantially higher rates, and a number of goods are duty-exempt — and the applicable rate follows the tariff classification of the specific goods, so it should be confirmed against the HS code rather than assumed. VAT-registered businesses can normally recover import VAT through their VAT return, so for them it is a cash-flow item rather than a permanent cost. Rates and exemptions are set by the authorities and are revised from time to time, so verify them for the goods and the date in question.
A certificate of origin states the country in which goods were produced, and is typically issued or attested by a chamber of commerce in the exporting country. Customs authorities use it to apply the correct duty rate, to enforce restrictions or quotas tied to a particular country, and to grant preferential — reduced or zero — duty where a trade agreement between the two countries applies. Whether one is required depends on the destination and the goods, and the requirement is usually driven by the importer’s customs authority or by the terms of a letter of credit. Note that origin means where the goods were manufactured or substantially transformed, not where they were shipped from: cargo trans-shipped through a hub does not acquire that hub’s origin.
When a forwarder consolidates several shipments into one container or one air consignment, two levels of document exist. The master document (Master Air Waybill or Master Bill of Lading) is issued by the carrier to the forwarder and covers the whole consolidated load; the house document (House Air Waybill or House Bill of Lading) is issued by the forwarder to each individual shipper and covers only that shipper’s cargo. As a customer you normally track and clear against the house number, and it is the house document that names you as shipper or consignee. The distinction matters whenever someone asks for "the AWB number": the master shows the flight or vessel, but it says nothing about your specific consignment’s release terms.
Both are charges levied by the shipping line for using its equipment or the terminal’s space beyond the free time your booking allows. Demurrage accrues while a container is still inside the port terminal after free time expires, usually because clearance or collection is slow. Detention accrues once the container has left the terminal and is in your possession, and runs until the empty container is returned to the carrier’s nominated depot. They accumulate daily and often escalate in tiers, so the defences are the same for both: have documents and duty settled before the vessel arrives, know exactly how many free days the booking includes, unload promptly, and return empties without waiting for a convenient moment.
Tracking shows events recorded at fixed checkpoints — collection, loading, departure, arrival, customs release, delivery — rather than a continuous live position. Long silences are normal during an ocean leg or while cargo waits at a consolidation warehouse, simply because no scan event is generated in between. A long gap after an arrival scan is different: it usually means the shipment is in customs clearance or waiting on a missing document, and that is the case genuinely worth chasing. When you do chase it, quote the transport document number, because that is the one reference every party in the chain shares.
A quote normally covers the transport charges the forwarder controls: the base rate for the mode and lane, plus known surcharges such as fuel and security. The final invoice can differ for a small set of predictable reasons — duties and taxes assessed by customs and passed on at cost, terminal handling and port charges, storage or demurrage caused by a delay, and re-measured chargeable weight if the cargo turned out larger or heavier than declared. Asking for a quote broken into freight, destination charges and estimated duty makes those items visible up front rather than at invoicing. It is also the only reliable way to compare two quotes: a door-to-door price and a port-to-port price are not comparable numbers.
Freight is billed on chargeable weight, and the carrier verifies that by weighing and measuring the cargo when it is tendered rather than taking the booking figures on trust. If the measured dimensions or weight exceed what was declared, the charge is recalculated on the measured figures, and the gap can be large when packaging, the pallet itself or overhanging cartons were left out of the original estimate. Measure the shipment as it will actually travel: the outer dimensions of the packed pallet at its widest and tallest point, and the gross weight including packaging, not the net weight of the product. Accurate figures at booking also protect the space and equipment reserved for you, which a significantly larger consignment may no longer fit.
Freight is lifted by forklift, transferred between vehicles and stacked, so packaging has to survive handling rather than merely present the product. Standard practice is to palletise: stack cartons squarely within the pallet footprint with no overhang, keep heavier items at the bottom, strap or stretch-wrap the load to the pallet, and cap it with a top sheet if it may be stacked. Mark every package with the consignee details and the shipment reference, and make the marks match the packing list exactly, because customs officers reconcile the two during an inspection. If solid wood packaging is used — pallets, crates, cases or dunnage — it generally has to be treated and stamped to the ISPM 15 standard for international movements, and untreated wood is a routine reason for cargo being held or refused at destination.
Lithium batteries are classified as dangerous goods for air transport and cannot be handed over as general cargo. They are declared under UN numbers that distinguish lithium-ion from lithium-metal chemistry, and standalone batteries from those packed with or contained in equipment; the packing, marking, labelling and documentation requirements follow from that classification together with the watt-hour rating and state of charge. Shipments also need a UN 38.3 test summary for the cell or battery type, and some categories are prohibited on passenger aircraft and can move only on cargo aircraft. Declare batteries at the time of booking — including any built into a device — because undeclared batteries found during acceptance screening will stop the shipment and can carry serious penalties.
Temperature-controlled shipping means the cargo is held within a defined range for the whole journey, not simply placed in something cold. Ocean shipments use reefer containers set to a specific temperature and connected to power on the vessel, at the terminal and on the truck; air shipments use either active containers with their own powered cooling unit or passive thermal packaging validated to hold a range for a stated number of hours. The controllable variables are the set point, whether the goods are pre-cooled before loading, and how long the cargo is exposed on the apron or at a terminal — which is where most temperature excursions actually occur. Regulated goods such as pharmaceuticals normally also require temperature data logging and documented handover conditions, so the cold chain can be evidenced rather than asserted.
A free zone is a designated area treated as outside the country’s customs territory for duty purposes. Goods can be brought in, stored, consolidated, repacked and re-exported without duty being paid, because they have not been imported for domestic consumption — Jebel Ali Free Zone, adjacent to Jebel Ali Port, is the largest example in the region. Duty becomes payable at the point the goods leave the zone and enter the local market, and that movement to the mainland is itself a customs transaction requiring its own declaration. This is what makes free zones efficient for regional distribution and re-export: one stock holding can serve several countries, and duty is only ever paid on what is actually sold locally.
Road freight is the usual middle option within the GCC, where air freight is disproportionately expensive for the distance and ocean freight adds port handling at both ends for a journey a truck can make directly. The cargo travels on a truck manifest accompanied by the commercial invoice, the packing list and any origin or permit documents, and crosses a land border where a customs declaration is processed and the vehicle and load may be inspected. The variable that dominates transit time is the border crossing rather than the driving distance, so documentation that matches the load exactly is the single biggest factor within a shipper’s control. Road freight also offers full-truck and part-load options, so a smaller consignment can share a vehicle much as LCL cargo shares a container.
Chargeable weight is the greater of actual gross weight and volumetric weight (L x W x H in cm / 5000 for air freight).
Commercial Invoice, Packing List, and Transport Document (AWB / Bill of Lading).
FCL is Full Container Load for a single shipper; LCL is Less than Container Load consolidated with other cargo.
Customs clearance requires customs declaration, bill of entry, inspection if flagged, and payment of duty and VAT.
Enter your 12-character AWB number (e.g. VXL...) on our tracking page to see the complete milestone timeline.
Tell us what you are shipping and where it needs to go. You will get a real answer from a person, not a form response.
