Door-to-Door Delivery

One booking instead of four

A port-to-port rate covers the least complicated part of an international move. It starts when the cargo is already at the origin terminal and stops when it lands at the destination one, which leaves the shipper to arrange collection, export clearance, import clearance and final delivery separately — usually with four different companies, four invoices and four opportunities for one of them to be waiting on another. Door-to-door replaces that with a single booking and a single point of contact.

What the service covers

The scope runs from the shipper's loading bay to the consignee's unloading point, on any lane in the network and in either direction.

• Collection from the shipper's premises
• Export customs clearance
• Origin terminal handling
• Sea or air main carriage
• Import customs clearance and duty handling
• Final-mile delivery to the consignee

Incoterms decide who pays for what

Door-to-door describes the physical route; the Incoterm in your contract decides which party is responsible for each leg and where risk transfers. DDP puts almost everything on the seller including destination duty, while EXW puts almost everything on the buyer from the moment the goods leave the factory gate. Neither is automatically better — but they price very differently, and agreeing the term before you quote avoids the common and expensive discovery that both parties assumed the other was arranging delivery.

What we need to know

The delivery end is where door-to-door moves usually come unstuck, so the useful details are practical ones. Tell us whether either site has a loading dock or needs a tail lift, whether a full-size articulated vehicle can physically reach it, whether there are access restrictions or booking-in procedures, and what the opening hours are. A container arriving at a site that cannot unload it is charged for waiting time, and that is entirely avoidable with one conversation at quote stage.