Air, Sea or Split: Late Shipment Expedite Sheet

How to read this sheet

Air freight is charged on the greater of actual and volumetric weight, so a bulky garment is billed for the air inside its carton and a dense one is not. That single rule is why the recommendation tracks value per chargeable kilogram rather than price, and why the most expensive style on a packing list is regularly the one that should sail. The baseline for every figure is the whole order going by sea and the buyer taking the discount, so a style flies only when the discount it avoids exceeds the extra freight it costs. Flying the entire order is priced separately because it is what tends to get agreed under pressure, and on most packing lists it is the worst of the three answers. What is not modelled matters as much as what is. This assumes the discount is a straight percentage of value applied per style; where the buyer's remedy is cancellation of the whole order, a chargeback on the entire allocation, or a lost slot in a marketing calendar, the consequence is not proportional and does not split by style - and flying one style to protect the rest can then be worth far more than the arithmetic here suggests. Nor does it model air capacity, which on a peak-season lane is often the binding constraint rather than money; the cost of a shorter customs clearance at destination; or the possibility that a part shipment triggers its own penalty. Consolidation is assumed unchanged - splitting a shipment across two modes can change the sea rate bracket and the destination handling per shipment, and neither is included.