How to Choose Parcel, Air Consolidation, Sea Consolidation or Sea Trucking for Cross-Border E-Commerce Shipping to the UAE?
Do you run a cross-border e-commerce business shipping to the UAE, but have no idea when to use air parcel, air consolidation, sea consolidation or sea trucking?
If your shipment is a parcel under 10kg, you can choose air parcel for air freight to UAE. It’s a bit pricey, but the upside is fast delivery. You need to provide customer information for customs clearance, and the chance of the cargo getting stuck is really slim – unless you’re shipping prohibited products.
For shipments over 10kg, go for air consolidation for air freight to UAE. It’s air freight plus door-to-door delivery, and there are two key differences between it and air parcel. First, for customs clearance, air parcel uses personal parcel clearance, while air consolidation uses general trade clearance.
After an air consolidation shipment is picked up at the destination, it will be sent to an overseas warehouse for sorting and then delivery. So its delivery time is a bit slower, usually 7 to 9 days, and the price is much lower than air parcel.
If a customer isn’t in a hurry for the same 10kg shipment, you can choose sea consolidation, which is sea freight plus door-to-door delivery. Everything is the same as air consolidation except for the local delivery part.
Last is sea trucking. When do you use it? Only when you have a large volume of goods or oversized cargo.
No matter which shipping method you choose, two things matter most: delivery time and price.
The above is just basic theoretical knowledge, and it won’t help much when you actually need to ship goods to the UAE. Especially since the cargo volume for air freight to UAE has been growing these years, theoretical knowledge alone isn’t enough when you have real cargo to send. You need to find a specific freight forwarder, but which one? It still comes down to delivery time and price. Only a suitable freight forwarder can solve your problems, and then you can report to your boss with ease.
For air freight to UAE, never choose an outsourcing freight forwarder. They’re just middlemen who re-sell your cargo to others and make a profit from it. So you must choose a direct freight forwarder for air freight to UAE like us. We exclusively book 20 pallet positions weekly from two major airlines – outsourcing companies are not in the same league as us.
In fact, even direct freight forwarders are not all the same. Most decent ones only have 2 or 3 pallet positions a week, while our shipping capacity is 10 times that of ordinary peers. Many clients with large project cargo first came to us just to negotiate prices, simply because they didn’t know much about us. But after learning our actual strength, they all signed contracts with us smoothly.
On price: since we exclusively book a large number of pallet positions, we get a very favorable price from the airlines. This keeps our costs low, so the quotes we offer to clients are naturally competitive.
On delivery time: air freight to UAE involves many steps, including space booking, security check, palletizing, loading, customs clearance and delivery. The key steps are local customs clearance and delivery in the UAE. We have a large shipping volume, and our local agent team has over 20 years of service experience with hundreds of staff. We have a priority channel at UAE customs and can finish clearance for urgent cargo in just 2 hours. Small freight forwarders don’t have such resources or their own cooperative local agents – they all pass cargo to small local agents, who also lack resources. It’s common for these small agents to wait 2 or 3 days in line for customs clearance.
With this comparison, we are the best choice for a freight forwarder for air freight to UAE.
DL Logistics is one of the top five companies for air freight to middle east. We exclusively book 20 pallet positions weekly from two major airlines, have a priority channel for customs clearance at UAE air ports and priority pick-up at warehouses. Our local logistics team has someone answering calls even at 2 a.m. Deliver in the morning, and the cargo arrives at noon; deliver at noon, and it arrives in the afternoon. We truly live up to our reputation as one of the top five.
DL’s air freight to middle east – everyone who uses it says it’s a smooth experience.