LCL Shipping to Jamaica

LCL — Less than Container Load — is how most shipments travel when they are too large for a barrel or a few boxes but nowhere near enough to fill a container on their own. Your cargo shares container space with other shipments on the same sailing, so you pay for the room you actually use instead of an entire box. Shore to Shore Shipping consolidates LCL cargo at our Union, New Jersey warehouse and moves it to our own offices in Kingston and Montego Bay, which means the same company handles your goods at both ends of the lane.

When LCL Is the Right Choice

LCL sits between the two extremes. A barrel or a handful of boxes suits a personal shipment of clothing, food and household goods. A full container suits a business moving stock in volume, or a household relocating an entire home. LCL covers everything in between — a few pallets of merchandise, the contents of a room, a bulk order too big to box.

The trade-off is time against cost. Because an LCL shipment is consolidated with other cargo and deconsolidated on arrival, it involves more handling than a container that is sealed at origin and opened at destination. In exchange, you are not paying for empty space.

• Cargo larger than a barrel but smaller than a full container.
• Business stock and merchandise moving in regular, moderate quantities.
• Part-household moves — a room or two rather than a whole home.
• Shipments where cost matters more than the fastest possible transit.

LCL vs FCL — How to Decide

FCL — Full Container Load — gives you an entire container for your goods alone. It is the better choice once your cargo approaches a container’s capacity, because at that point you are paying LCL rates for most of a container anyway, with more handling than a sealed container would involve. FCL also suits goods you would rather nobody else’s cargo travels alongside.

There is no fixed cut-off that applies to every shipment — it depends on volume, weight, how the goods are packed and how time-sensitive they are. Send us the dimensions and we will tell you honestly which one works out better for your shipment rather than defaulting you to one or the other.

How an LCL Shipment Moves

1. You request a quote with the dimensions, weight and description of your cargo.
2. Your goods are delivered to, or collected for, our Union, New Jersey warehouse.
3. We consolidate the shipment into a container with other cargo bound for the same port.
4. The container sails to Jamaica, where our own Kingston or Montego Bay office receives it.
5. The container is deconsolidated and your cargo is separated out for clearance.
6. Customs clearance is handled, and the goods are released for collection or onward delivery.

What Affects an LCL Quote

LCL is normally priced on the space your cargo occupies, measured by volume, with weight taken into account for dense goods. Beyond that, the origin and destination, the nature of the goods, how well they are packed and palletised, and the duties payable on arrival all feed into the final figure. Poorly packed cargo takes up more room than it needs to and costs more as a result.