The standard advice about container loading is to fill it. That advice is incomplete, and following it literally is how importers end up paying freight on half a container while their goods sit in it.
Density is the number that decides your cost
Freight is charged per container, not per unit. That means the only thing that matters for your landed cost is what fraction of the container’s cubic volume and weight capacity your goods occupy. Two orders with identical unit prices can differ by 30% in landed cost purely because of how they pack.
| Product | Unit volume | What 500 units fill |
|---|---|---|
| Stainless steel bowls | Dense, about 1.1 L each | Base layer. Heavy, compact, immovable. |
| Nylon leashes | Very light, about 0.4 L each | Fills the void above bowls almost endlessly. |
| Training pads | Light, bulky, about 3 L each | Fills volume fast, contributes almost no weight. |
Load bowls first, then leashes, then pads. The same three products in the reverse order leave the container half empty and the freight per unit roughly double.
The physical rules that decide the sequence
- Weight first, then volume. Heavy dense goods at the bottom, light bulky goods above. Every container hits its weight limit before its volume limit if you load it correctly, and if you do not, you pay for air.
- Planets and voids. The space between four boxes of bowls is exactly the space a bundle of leashes fits. This is not a metaphor, it is why a mixed load packs better than a single-SKU load.
- Do not crush. Pet products are mostly hollow, foam or fabric. Boxes get crushed under load, which damages the product and the packaging. Plan for the compression.
- Access order. Whatever comes off first at the destination should come off last at the origin. Nobody wants to unpack a container in the rain to reach the goods that are going into the store tomorrow.
Moisture is the rule that has no workaround
Absorbent and hygiene products, including training pads, cat litter and paper-based items, must never be stacked against anything that has to stay dry. If a leak or a tear happens in transit, it affects whatever is adjacent. Plan for separation, and tell the consolidator in advance rather than at loading time.
Ask for the loading plan before you pay
- A drawing showing what goes where, with the cube and weight per position.
- The projected container utilisation rate. Under 80% and the freight per unit is being wasted.
- A photograph of the loaded container, taken from the door, before it is sealed.
If the consolidator cannot produce the third item, that tells you something about how the rest of the process is run.
The compounding effect
None of this is interesting on a single order of one product. It becomes very interesting when you realise that the packing decision is also what makes cross-category consolidation possible at all, and cross-category consolidation is what makes a mixed order worth doing.
