LCL vs FCL calculator — which ocean freight mode is cheaper?

It is lane-specific and it moves with the spot market: at June-2026 spot levels the crossover sits roughly between 17 and 32 CBM across the eight lanes (about 31 CBM on Shanghai → Los Angeles at the 2026-06-04 Drewry WCI print). The calculator surfaces the exact crossover CBM where LCL all-in cost equals FCL 20ft all-in cost for the lane you select. Below that volume LCL wins on price; above it the flat container rate beats the per-W/M LCL billing. Time also matters — LCL adds 5–10 days for consolidation and deconsolidation at the CFS.

LCL is billed per revenue ton (weight or measure, W/M): the carrier charges the HIGHER of your cargo volume in CBM and its weight in metric tonnes. Light, bulky cargo pays on volume; dense cargo pays on weight. That single rule explains most surprises in LCL quotes — a 2-tonne, 1-CBM machine part is billed as 2 revenue tons, not 1.

Demurrage and detention are the per-day penalties for holding a container at the terminal or off-dock beyond free time. FCL carries this exposure; LCL does not (you never control the box). The calculator adds a probability-weighted premium to each FCL mode using a fixed internal assumption — 18% incident probability × up to 7 days × $175/day, roughly doubled for rush cargo. It is a modelling heuristic, not lane-specific congestion data — your terminal's actual tariff and free time govern.

The four China mainline lanes were re-verified against the Drewry World Container Index weekly assessment of 2026-06-04 on 2026-06-11. Shenzhen and Busan reuse that assessed corridor level as a proxy; the transatlantic and India lanes are unverified estimates and are marked as such in the lane selector. A staleness gate re-flags the whole dataset if it goes more than 45 days without re-verification (ocean spot can move more than 20% in a month) — you will see a warning above the form instead of silently outdated numbers.

Per the Drewry World Container Index weekly assessment of 2026-06-04 (re-verified for this tool on 2026-06-11), the spot benchmarks were $4,565 per 40ft Shanghai → Los Angeles, $5,505 Shanghai → New York, $3,579 Shanghai → Rotterdam, and $5,089 Shanghai → Genoa. The WCI assesses 40ft dry containers only, so this calculator derives 20ft at roughly 75% of the 40ft print (about $3,425 Shanghai → Los Angeles) and 40HC at roughly 104% (about $4,750) — dry-market conventions, not assessed prints. On top of the lane rate the model adds per-container local charges of $520 (20ft), $720 (40ft), or $740 (40HC) covering THC, documentation, and ISPS, plus a probability-weighted demurrage premium. Ocean spot moves weekly, so treat these as orientation levels, not a bookable quote.

Only if it clears BOTH caps. Every container tier has a volume cap and a payload cap: a 20ft takes about 33 CBM but only 21.7 tonnes of payload; a 40ft takes 67 CBM at 26.5 t; a 40HC takes 76 CBM at 26.5 t (ISO dry-container payload specs, re-checked 2026-06-11). A 10 CBM machinery shipment weighing 28 tonnes fits any of those boxes by volume but exceeds every single-container payload cap, so this calculator honestly prices it as 2 × 40HC and shows a multi-container note — recommending a single 20ft for that load would be wrong. Density also works against you in LCL: W/M billing takes the HIGHER of CBM and tonnes, so that same 28-tonne load on Shanghai → Los Angeles bills 28 revenue tons at the $95-per-W/M mid-market estimate plus handling, which is why dense cargo crosses over to FCL far earlier than volume-only rules of thumb suggest.