Ocean and air freight
between Asia and Canada.

The Canadian West Coast offers two genuinely different propositions. The Port of Vancouver is the largest in the country, served by both national railways, and surrounded by the densest concentration of transload facilities, warehouses and drayage capacity in Western Canada. Prince Rupert is the closest North American port to Asia, with a shorter crossing and a single-line CN route running inland, but with far fewer sailings and very little local warehousing.

That difference drives the decision more than the sailing time does. Freight that is going to sit on a train to Chicago or Toronto without being touched benefits from Prince Rupert, because the whole point is that nothing happens to it at the coast. Freight that needs to be deconsolidated, transloaded, stored, picked or sorted needs Vancouver, because that is where the capacity to do those things exists. Choosing Prince Rupert for freight that needs coastal work is how importers end up trucking containers five hours south.

East coast arrival is a separate question again. Montréal and Halifax are reached on much longer routings from Asia rather than across the Pacific, but for freight destined for Quebec or eastern Ontario the shorter inland leg can offset a good deal of the extra water time. Where the schedule allows it and the destination is in the east, it is worth pricing rather than assuming the Pacific is always the answer.

Importers tend to shop the ocean rate hard and then accept whatever the inland leg costs, which is the wrong way round. On a Shanghai to Toronto move the ocean portion is a competitive, near-commodity market with published rates. The inland portion is where the variance lives: rail against truck, transloaded or not, demurrage and detention, the receiving appointment, and storage if the warehouse cannot take the freight on the day it arrives.

Transloading is the single largest lever. Marine containers are 40 ft and Canadian domestic trailers are 53 ft, so three marine boxes routinely become two domestic trailers, removing a whole inland movement from the cost. It also returns the marine container to the shipping line quickly, which stops detention accruing while the box sits at a consignee waiting to be emptied at their convenience.

The second lever is simply sequence. A container that arrives with customs release already obtained, a trucker already booked and a receiving appointment already confirmed moves off the terminal within its free time and costs what it was quoted. A container that arrives before anyone has arranged those things starts accruing demurrage on a daily clock while the arrangements are made. We plan the arrival before the vessel sails rather than when it berths.

Air freight from Asia is typically several times the ocean rate and saves two to three weeks. Framed that way the decision is simple arithmetic: what is three weeks worth on this particular shipment? For high-value, low-weight goods where the capital tied up in transit is significant, air often wins outright. For a product launch with a fixed date, or for a stockout that is costing daily sales, it wins clearly. For routine replenishment stock it almost never does.

The pricing mechanism catches people out. Air freight charges on chargeable weight, which is the greater of actual weight and dimensional weight calculated from the volume the shipment occupies. Light, bulky freight is therefore expensive in a way that surprises shippers who quote a kilogram figure. How the freight is packed changes the rate materially, and a shipment repacked to reduce its cube can cost meaningfully less to fly.

There is a middle option worth knowing about. Splitting a shipment so the urgent portion flies and the balance sails gets critical stock on shelves within days while the bulk of the volume travels at ocean cost. It requires the supplier to cooperate on packing and paperwork, but on a genuine stockout it is nearly always cheaper than flying everything.

Canada requires cargo data in advance of a container being loaded at the foreign port, under the marine 24-hour rule. Filing it is a carrier and forwarder obligation rather than something the importer does directly, but it is assembled from the shipper documents, which means an incomplete or late commercial invoice at origin becomes a loading problem rather than an arrival problem. Freight has missed sailings over a description too vague to file against.

Incoterms decide far more than most importers realise, because they set where the supplier responsibility ends and yours begins. On EXW and FOB terms the importer controls the ocean leg and can choose the carrier, the routing and the arrival gateway. On CIF and DDP terms the supplier has made those choices, usually to suit themselves, and the importer inherits a routing, a forwarder and sometimes a set of destination charges they never agreed to. Reviewing the term before the next purchase order is one of the cheapest improvements available.

Classification and valuation determine the duty and GST payable on arrival, and they are the importer legal responsibility rather than the forwarder. Getting them right at the outset matters more than it seems, because Canadian customs can review entries after the fact, and a classification that was convenient rather than correct becomes a reassessment with interest attached.

The transpacific has two annual disruptions that are entirely foreseeable and that catch importers out anyway. Factories across much of Asia close for Lunar New Year, and again for the national holiday at the start of October. In both cases production stops for one to two weeks and, in practice, ramps down before and up slowly afterwards.

The pattern that follows is always the same. Volume surges in the weeks before the shutdown as every importer tries to get goods away, capacity tightens, rates rise and rolled bookings become common. During the shutdown volume collapses. Afterwards there is a quieter window with loose capacity and softer rates before production returns to normal. Both the surge and the lull are visible months in advance.

Planning around it is unglamorous and effective. Book earlier than the rush rather than into it, accept an arrival window in the quiet period where inventory allows, and treat the weeks immediately before each shutdown as a period when reliability is worth paying for rather than a period to shop for the cheapest rate. Importers who do this pay less and get rolled less, in both directions.

The transpacific is not one-directional, and Canadian exporters have a structural advantage on it: because import volume into Canada exceeds export volume out, empty containers accumulate on this side and westbound space is generally easier to secure and more competitively priced than eastbound space into Canada. For an exporter that is a real commercial benefit rather than a technicality.

Canadian export freight to Asia is dominated by agricultural products, forest products, industrial machinery and equipment. Much of it is dense, which changes the container decision: 20 ft units and weight limits become the binding constraint rather than volume, and the cargo weight allowed on the road leg to the port is often what actually caps the load rather than the container itself.

Export documentation runs the other way from import documentation and has its own requirements: certificates of origin where the destination requires them, phytosanitary and inspection certificates for agricultural and forest products, fumigation certification for wood packaging, and destination-country requirements that vary considerably across Asia. We establish those before booking, because an export held at origin for a missing certificate is a longer and more expensive problem than an import held on arrival.