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What IS Actual weight?

We wont spend much time on understanding actual weight as it is the (actual) weight on scale of cargo. It is easily understandable. However, people get confused over Volume weight or so called volumetric weight of the shipment.

Before we jump on to volume weight, its better to understand chargeable weight. Lets take help of an example here. If you have a shipment if 1000 kgs of cotton, it will have a huge volume occupying almost the whole container. Alternatively, if you have a shipment of same weight but these are stones it can easily be accommodated as LCL shipment. Therefore, it would be unfair to charge on actual weight, this is where chargeable( volumetric weight) comes in to play.

The Rule of thumb used by Airlines, shipping lines is to charge the higher of Actual and Volume weight.

Hope this clarifies the basic difference of the two!!

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