Agreed on the last mile.

  The port and shipping company can also be an issue.  If you're going from a well-known port in China to Newark or Newport News, the price will involve huge economies of scale and much automation.  But going to ports with less commercial container traffic, say from Charleston to Split, Croatia, involves shipping routes with much less pre-existing traffic, smaller shipping companies, and more manual handling. 

  It's the same reason why I can fly from Boston to DC on Southwest for $100 (when they have super-saver deals), while flying from Portland, ME to DC can cost four times as much on the same day.  It's only another 120 miles, but the difference in airlines, airports, and amount of traffic from A to B makes all the difference.

       - Mike


Arto Hakkarainen wrote:

Price depends very much on the first and last miles. A client quoted their shipping prices to me last week and said shipping from China to Europe cost a lot less than towing the last 400 km (250 miles) with truck. So the most expensive part may well be the first and last miles, not the shipping.   Arto

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