Pricing · 2 July 2026 · 4 min read
The five surcharges most likely to eat your margin
Local charges are where quotes go wrong. A short field guide to the ones that catch teams out most often.
Base ocean freight is the number everyone checks. Margin usually disappears somewhere else entirely — in the charges that arrive later, from a different party, in a different currency.
The usual suspects: terminal handling at destination, congestion surcharges applied mid-voyage, currency adjustment on a lane quoted in a third currency, documentation fees that vary by port, and demurrage that nobody assigned an owner to.
None of these are hard to include. They're just easy to forget when the quote is being assembled by hand under time pressure. Which is the real argument for all-in pricing generated from a structured rate set: not elegance, just fewer surprises on the invoice.
See Freight Puzzle with your own rates
Bring a handful of your carrier contracts to the call. We'll load them, quote a live shipment, and you can judge the difference for yourself.