Sole-use containers, shared groupage, air freight and marine cover — how volume in cubic feet turns into a shipping quote, line by line.
A shipping container house move is priced on three things: how much space your belongings occupy, whether you are willing to share that space with other households, and how much physical handling happens at each end of the journey. Once those three are clear, the quotes you have been comparing stop looking arbitrary. We run 100–150 overseas jobs a year through our international removals service, and this page is about the freight itself — container sizes, groupage, air freight, and where every pound on the quote actually goes.
The paperwork side of an overseas move — customs declarations, biosecurity certificates, proof of residence, duty relief and the destination country’s import rules — is covered separately in our guide to international moves from Sussex. What follows here is the shipping mechanics: container capacity expressed in rooms rather than feet, why a shared consignment can wait three weeks at a consolidation warehouse, what a terminal handling charge is for, why marine cover is a different policy from your removal insurance, and how a surveyor turns a house full of furniture into a number in cubic feet.
Every household shipment leaves the UK in one of three ways, and the choice is usually settled by volume rather than by preference. Sole-use (FCL) means one container carries one household and nothing else. The box is loaded at our Lower Dicker depot, the doors are closed and secured with a numbered bolt seal, and that seal number is written on your paperwork so you can check it has not been broken when the container is opened at the far end. Sole-use becomes practical from roughly 35 cubic metres upward — a three-bedroom house with a garage and a loft is comfortably in that territory.
Where we ship most often, each with its own guide covering that route’s customs position, transit window and delivery realities: Thailand, Switzerland, France and Paris on a weekly service, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the USA and Canada, South Africa and the UAE.
Groupage (LCL) means your belongings share a container with two, three or four other households heading to the same destination region. Everything is wrapped, listed and colour-tagged to your consignment, then loaded into a defined block of the container behind a strapped barrier or bulkhead. You pay for the space you occupy rather than for the whole box, which is why it is the cheapest way to send a modest volume overseas. It suits 10–35 cubic metres — a flat, a small two-bed, or a larger house where most of the furniture is being sold rather than shipped.
Air freight is charged on weight rather than on container space, and it sits in a different cost bracket entirely. It earns its keep for a small essentials shipment that has to arrive within days, for work equipment you cannot be without, or for one irreplaceable item you would rather not have at sea for six weeks. Almost nobody air-freights an entire household, and the few who do are usually on a corporate relocation budget rather than paying themselves.
There is no universally correct answer between the three. A family shipping a full house to Australia is choosing between a 20-foot and a 40-foot sole-use container. A couple retiring to Spain with a sofa, a bed, twenty cartons and a bicycle is choosing between groupage and simply buying new at the other end. The honest comparison is always volume against replacement cost against how long you are prepared to wait.
Container sizes are quoted in feet, which tells you very little about your sofa. Translated into household terms: a 20-foot container gives roughly 33 cubic metres of usable space, which in practice absorbs a well-packed two-bedroom to modest three-bedroom home. A 40-foot container gives roughly 67 cubic metres and handles a full four to five-bedroom house including garden furniture, bikes, a workshop bench and the contents of a loft. There is also a 40-foot high-cube, which adds about a foot of internal height and is useful when a load is bulky and light rather than heavy.
Those figures assume professional loading, and the difference is not small. A crew builds the load as a wall from the doors backwards: heavy case goods and appliances on the floor, cartons stacked in even tiers up to the roof line, mattresses and mirrors flat against the side walls, pad-wrapped upholstery slotted into the remaining voids and everything strapped back at intervals. Empty space is the enemy twice over — it wastes capacity you have already paid for, and it lets the load move when the vessel rolls.
Two things routinely upset the sums at survey. The first is the loft and the garage, which people forget to mention because they are not thinking of them as rooms, and which between them can add several cubic metres. The second is what cannot travel at all: aerosols, paint, cleaning chemicals, fuel, gas bottles, lighter refills and anything else on the dangerous-goods list is barred from a household container, and food, seeds and plant material are restricted almost everywhere. Our guide to what you can and cannot store covers the same principle for warehouse storage; the shipping list is stricter again.
If your volume lands awkwardly — too much for comfortable groupage, not quite enough to justify a sole-use 20-foot — there are two honest answers. Ship less, by selling or gifting the bulky low-value items and replacing them at the far end, which our downsizing guide works through room by room. Or take the sole-use container anyway and fill the spare capacity with the things you would otherwise have spent a year regretting. Either is defensible; paying groupage rates on a volume that is nearly a full container rarely is.
Groupage is cheaper for a simple reason: the shipping line is paid for a full container whatever is inside it, and that cost is divided between the households sharing the box. The catch is equally simple. The container does not sail until it is full. Your belongings are wrapped and inventoried at your home, brought back to the depot, then either held here or trunked to a consolidation warehouse near the port where the shipment for your destination region is being built.
How long that takes depends entirely on how busy the route is. High-frequency lanes fill quickly, and a consignment collected this week may be on a vessel within a week or two. Thinner routes fill slowly. A shared container for a less-travelled destination can genuinely sit waiting for enough volume to justify sailing, and no honest firm will put a guaranteed date on that without a booked slot behind it.
This is the single most misunderstood part of shipping a household, and it is where most complaints start. The sea transit time is the visible number and gets quoted confidently; the consolidation wait sits in front of it and often does not get quoted at all. When you compare two groupage prices, ask how frequently that firm consolidates for your destination, whether the sailing date is a booked slot or a forecast, and what happens to your goods in the meantime. A cheap rate with an open-ended wait is not the same product as a slightly dearer rate on a fixed weekly service.
Two practical consequences follow. First, the essentials you keep with you need to cover the whole gap, not just the sailing — documents, a few weeks of clothing, chargers, medication, work equipment and something familiar for the children. Second, if your UK sale completes before the container sails, our containerised storage in Sussex holds everything in sealed timber containers so the furniture is handled once rather than twice. The short-term versus long-term storage comparison explains how that period is charged.
Every international quote starts life as a volume figure. UK removers traditionally work in cubic feet; shipping lines and overseas agents work in cubic metres. One cubic metre is 35.3 cubic feet, and both numbers appear on our paperwork so nothing is lost when the file passes to the destination agent.
The figure comes from a survey rather than a guess. The surveyor walks each room and assigns a volume to every item from a standard removals volume table — each sofa, bed, wardrobe, dresser and appliance has an established figure — then adds the cartons your loose effects will need once they are packed. Books, kitchenware, glassware and framed pictures are the classic underestimates, because contents sitting openly on a shelf occupy far more space once they are inside a carton with paper around them.
That single number then drives everything downstream: whether you are offered groupage or sole-use, which container size gets booked, the freight rate, the destination handling fee and the sum you insure. Get the volume wrong and every figure after it is wrong too, which is why a proper in-home or video survey matters more on an overseas job than on a local one. Our volume calculator gives you a working estimate to plan against before we visit.
Two rules of thumb are worth carrying into any quote conversation. Fixed costs — documentation, the customs entry, terminal handling, agent attendance at delivery — barely move with the size of the shipment, so the cost per cubic metre of a small consignment always looks poor beside a full container. And on sea freight you are buying space, not weight: a container of books and a container of duvets cost the same to ship even though one weighs several times the other. Weight only starts to bite on air freight and on unusually heavy sole-use loads where a road weight limit comes into play at one end or the other.
The ocean freight rate is the headline number and it is rarely more than half the total. The rest is handling, and it lands in predictable places. At the UK end: collection and pad-wrapping at your home, export packing where the destination requires it, transport to the port, container hire and positioning, the export customs entry, and the terminal handling charge the port levies for lifting the box on and off the quay.
At sea, surcharges ride on top of the base rate and move with the market — a bunker adjustment for fuel, a currency adjustment on dollar-denominated rates, and occasionally a congestion or peak-season surcharge when a route is under strain. A quote fixed for a stated validity period has these built in. A quote that looks unusually cheap may have left them to be added once you are committed, so check what the rate is guaranteed against and for how long.
At the destination the line items multiply, because a second company is now doing physical work on your behalf. Expect destination terminal handling, an import customs entry, agent documentation, quarantine or biosecurity attendance where the country requires it, delivery from port to your address, and the unload itself. Add demurrage and port storage if the container cannot be cleared or delivered promptly — ports charge by the day once the free period expires, and that free period is shorter than most people assume. We coordinate this end through our FIDI-network partners so you are dealing with one file rather than a foreign-language conversation with a firm you have never met.
Then there are the site-specific extras that only surface when the destination crew arrives: a shuttle vehicle because an articulated lorry cannot reach the property, a long carry from the nearest legal parking point, a stair charge above a certain floor, or a crane or external hoist for a window lift. None of these are unusual and all of them are avoidable surprises if the destination address is described honestly at survey — road width, gradient, parking restrictions, lift dimensions, which floor. When you compare two international quotes the useful question is not “what is the rate” but “which of these charges are included and which are payable on arrival”. Our list of questions to ask a removals company is a sensible place to start, and our guide to avoiding moving scams covers what an artificially low headline rate usually means.
Air freight is charged on chargeable weight, which is the greater of the actual weight and the volumetric weight of the consignment. Household effects are bulky and light, so the volumetric figure almost always wins — a carton of bedding weighing a few kilos is charged as though it weighed several times that. Understanding that one rule explains why air quotes for furniture come back at numbers that look like an error.
Where air earns its place is the essentials shipment. The common pattern on a long-haul move is a small air consignment of two or three cartons travelling with or just behind the family, and everything else following by sea. Into the air cartons go work equipment, school materials, a few weeks of clothing, kitchen basics and the children’s familiar things. Into the container goes the furniture. The family is functional from the first week rather than the eighth, and the sea shipment can take as long as it needs to.
The other genuine case is the single irreplaceable object. A musical instrument, a small painting or a piece of family silver can travel by air in a purpose-built case with far less handling and far shorter exposure than the same item spending six weeks in a steel box. We build cases for exactly that through our export packing and crating service, and the handling principles are the same ones we apply to a piano move in the UK.
What air freight does not do is shortcut the paperwork. The customs entry, the inventory and the import clearance are the same as for a sea shipment, and airport handling and clearance fees weigh proportionally heavier on a small consignment. Budget for a fixed administrative floor on any air shipment, however few cartons are in it, and check whether restricted items you would happily post — batteries, aerosols, certain electronics — are acceptable on that airline at all.
We're a family-run Sussex remover. Crews are directly employed and trained at our own staff training centre, which is why the loading of a container is done the same way every time. Pad-wrap on every full removal, removal-grade cartons, and a full British Association of Removers membership audited annually, with every deposit protected by the BAR Advance Payment Guarantee. Our international work is carried out to the BS 8564 international removals standard.
120+ independent Google reviews at 4.9/5. Survey, written quote within 48 hours, deposit-protected booking, calm loading day. Whichever category your move falls into — routine local, overseas, antiques, business — the approach is the same.
Booking the survey takes ten minutes via the online form.
Almost every overseas move involves a wait somewhere. Storage before shipping holds the shipment sealed on one inventory until the sailing or the visa comes through.
Free in-home or video survey, a volume figure you can check, and a written fixed-price quote with the destination charges spelled out. BAR-protected deposit.
Standard goods-in-transit cover protects your belongings while they are in our vehicles and our warehouse. It does not follow the container onto a ship. For the ocean leg you need marine cargo cover, and on a household shipment it is not optional in any meaningful sense — a container lost overboard or water-damaged in a hold is a total loss with nobody to pursue.
Marine policies are written against a declared value, and that value comes from an inventory you complete yourself, item by item, at replacement cost in the destination country. That last part matters more than people expect: replacing a dining table in Sydney or Zurich is not the same price as replacing it in Sussex. Undervaluing the shipment to shave the premium is a false economy, because most policies apply average — declare half the true value and a partial claim is settled at half as well.
All risks is the sensible default for household effects and responds to accidental loss or damage from any external cause not specifically excluded. Named perils is cheaper and only pays out on a listed set of events such as fire, sinking, collision, stranding or general average. Warehouse-to-warehouse extends cover across the land legs at both ends so there is no gap between the removal policy and the marine policy. Cartons you pack yourself are usually excluded from damage claims unless the outer carton is visibly breached, which is one practical argument for our full packing service on an overseas job — a professionally packed and listed carton is an insurable carton.
Two exclusions catch people out. Mechanical or electrical derangement — an appliance that arrives intact but no longer works — is normally excluded without external evidence of impact. And mould or mildew caused by condensation inside a container is generally excluded too, which is why anything damp-sensitive travels with desiccant and why we will not load a fridge, washing machine or dishwasher that has not been drained and thoroughly dried. Instruments, upholstery and paper-based items all deserve a conversation at survey rather than a surprise at the unload.
High-value single items are handled separately. Fine art, antiques, jewellery and collections are usually declared line by line rather than as part of the general sum insured, and some are better crated than wrapped. Our antiques and valuable furniture guide covers the handling side, and our bespoke crating service builds cases to the object rather than fitting the object to a box. Whatever the shipment contains, damage is documented at the unload with photographs and a written exception noted before the delivery paperwork is signed — a claim raised after a clean signature is a much harder claim to win.
Booking a container shipment with us is a five-step process. One: enquire via the online quote form or call our office on 01323 848 008. We’ll arrange a survey within a few working days. Two: the survey itself, in-home or by video, lasting 30–90 minutes. The surveyor walks the property, photographs access at both ends where possible, counts cartons by size and produces the volume figure everything else is built on.
Three: the written quote, emailed within 48 hours. Itemised by line, with UK charges, freight and destination charges separated so you can see which side of the water each cost sits on and what is payable on arrival. Four: deposit and sailing confirmation. Typically a 25% deposit on confirmation, fully protected under the British Association of Removers’ Advance Payment Guarantee. Five: the pack and load itself. Uniformed crew, our own lorry, no agency labour, blankets washed between jobs, and a signed inventory before the seal goes on.
Remember that international removals are zero-rated for UK VAT, while a domestic removal is VATable — the two quotes are not directly comparable line for line, and our pricing page explains how each is set out. For pre-move questions, our office is reachable Monday to Friday 8am to 5:30pm and Saturday 9am to 1pm, or by email at office@markratcliffemoving.co.uk. We’d rather have the conversation early than late — a clarification three weeks before loading day saves a genuine misunderstanding on the day itself.
Start earlier than feels necessary. Overseas moves reward lead time more than any other category: a survey three or four months out means you have a real volume figure to plan against, time to decide what is worth shipping, a booked slot rather than whatever is left, and no need to make expensive decisions in the last fortnight. Read our background as a Sussex remover, then book the survey.
Roughly 33 cubic metres of usable space, which a trained crew will fill with a well-packed two-bedroom to modest three-bedroom home. A 40-foot container roughly doubles that at around 67 cubic metres and takes a four to five-bedroom house including loft and garage. Loading skill makes a real difference to both figures.
Per cubic metre, yes, because the cost of the container is shared between several households. It stops being the cheaper option once your volume approaches a full 20-foot load, at which point you are paying shared rates for nearly a whole container and waiting for consolidation as well.
Until there is enough volume for that destination to fill the container. Busy routes turn round in a week or two; thinner routes can take several weeks. Ask any firm how often they consolidate for your destination and whether the sailing date you have been given is a booked slot or a forecast.
Because a different company does that work. Import entry, terminal handling, quarantine attendance, delivery and unload are all carried out by the agent at the far end. Compare quotes on which charges are included and which are payable on arrival, not on the headline rate alone.
Yes. Goods-in-transit cover applies to our vehicles and our warehouse and stops at the quayside. The ocean leg needs marine cargo cover, declared at replacement cost in the destination country. Warehouse-to-warehouse all-risks closes the gap at both ends.
For a whole household, almost never — air is charged on volumetric weight and household effects are bulky and light. For a small essentials shipment that travels with the family, or for one irreplaceable item in a purpose-built case, it is often the sensible choice.