Shipping/brokerage costs to Vancouver
 

As we know if we buy say a skimmer and some other stuff from the US the shipping costs really add to our landed cost here plus $25.00 brokerage fees.

I contacted a CTB (Certified Transportation Broker) this morning.To ship a truckload (45,000 lbs) from anywhere in the US to Vancouver as opposed to Seattle only adds $500.00 to the cost.

Wayne Ryan

how many hundreds on duty?

US made goods are duty free.

what about live rock from us waters. big dirrerence in canadian vs us prices

also how many aquarium products are actually made in the us.

It is illegal to harvest live rock in the US. Most of it is shipped directly from Indonesia and other Asian countries to the US for the US market and to Canada for the Canadian market.

I have no idea but I believe fish food is exempt from duty no matter where is was made. Chinese made aquariums are imported directly to Canada. No idea what the duty rate is on that kind of stuff.

full truck?
 

Dude, give your head a shake. Look at the size of the Canadian stores. How many of them are bringing in full truckloads (~40 to 48 skids) of goods from a single supplier. None. This argument and information is worthless. I'm sure the CTB appreciated you wasting their time.....

Jim

Jim, with the greatest respect you are wrong.

Seattle LFS or wholesalers face the same issue regarding bringing in less than full truckloads as those in Vancouver.

Therefore, the only difference is freight to Vancouver which is five hundred bucks a truckload.

Wrong....the US vendors likely have way more pre paid shipping deals than a Canadian vendor.
I'm not in the aquarium industry, but in one that is logistically very similar. I work for a distributor who imports many many products from the US and trust me...shipping is not cheap. Often there are pre-paid shipping deals, but you generally need to buy 5-10K plus to meet free freight. So if it's a product line where only a few SKU's sell well, you aften need to buy 6months to a year+ supply to get the freight pre-paid. Now all of the sudden, you are stuck with product you bought at a higher dollar.....Seriously man, it does cost canadian importers more than you think to buy US goods.