hermes movers

News Gallery

Your Location: Home  > News Gallery

LCL and FCL shipment

2017/03/18 By:hermes
Firstly I want to give a definition of a few words will be mentioned following:
LCL:  Less than Container Load
FCL:  Full Container Load
CBM: Cubic Metres
THC: Terminal Handling Charges


When we need to move from a country to anther ,  we have some personal effects like clothes, shoes, books, decorations, furniture, kitchenwares, paintings, pictures and so on, we found out we can't take all of them by our flight. Then we need to find a mover to help us. 

However many of us will get confused after we received the quotation from the relocation companies. Why the mover suggested we need to use the LCL shipment or FCL shipment. Here I will help to explain a little bit from our own experiences.

In the moving and relocation industry, when we sending goods by sea,  we normally just consider the volume of the goods, since the household goods are not that heavy. All the quotes will based on the volume (space) of our goods and the materials will be need when packing( the material being used need to assure the goods' safety in its journey,this why we will make crate for some fragile  and delicate goods like mirrors, TV, piano, computer, glass table top and so on).

When the total volume is below 15 CBM, normally we suggest our clients to use LCL shipment to send out. However it depends on where the clients move to. Some Asia countries like Singapore and HongKong, the destination THC is very high for LCL shipment, as well as Spain. So sometimes when the goods is around 12 CBM, we suggest client to use FCL. We will professionally packed up all the goods by our professional packer use our specialized packing materials: packing paper, packing plastic bubbles, carton boxes, wooden crate, cardboard and so on) to pack up all the goods. Then we stack up all the packed boxes and items on the pallets( the lighter and fragile ones will be on the top, the others will be in the bottom)  and use the plastic film to wrap the whole goods at first, then use cardboard  to wrap the stacked goods again, then we will fasten the pallets and goods with special ropes ,and then another layer of plastic film wrap on the top layer of the goods to protect the goods from the rain and humidity.  You can get some clue from the pictures following:

The first step of stacking up the goods on a pallet


After the pallets making process completed 

By making a pallet, it can help to protect the goods from destroying by human's mistakes, normally they will use a chart to load up and unload the goods. This why some clients used our services moved from Shanghai to abroad, they sent us the pictures when goods arrived destination, the goods were still in a pallet with good conditions. Following is a picture client took after the LCL shipment arrived in Toronto, Canada.


When the total volume is bigger than 15 CBM, for sure we  suggest our clients to use FCL shipment. Since the destination THC is normal sometimes much cheaper than the LCL shipment. And the container make the full goods as one , then it also assure the safety of the goods in their journey.

Above is a FCL shipment from Shanghai to Sydney. The goods already arrived in Sydney and there is no broken and other problems, our clients are happy with our services.

I hope after you reading this article, you won't be that confused as before.
By the way if you or your friends need relocation and moving services, please feel free to contact us, we are always ready and happy to assist you. 









Returns list

LCL and FCL shipment
Home  |  Useful Links Our Services  |  Move Guidline Copyright © 2013 Hermes All Rights Reserved.