Freight calculator: find the right port + mode in seconds

Type any origin and destination city. We resolve them to coordinates, find the nearest international port or air gateway, and give you an indicative distance and transit time. Powered by UN/LOCODE + IATA data and the same routing engine our operators use.

How the freight calculator works

Most cargo owners don’t ship directly from a port — they ship from a city, an industrial park, or a supplier’s warehouse. The calculator bridges the gap. You type a place name in plain English (“Cabuyao, Philippines”, “Elgin, IL”, “Bremerhaven”); we look it up against the Google Geocoding API to get coordinates; then we search the curated list of 3,121 international ports, airports, and intermodal gateways for the closest one that matches your mode.

The match is biased toward the same country — a small Mexican border town routes through a Mexican port even if a US port happens to sit slightly closer, because cross-border freight needs customs handling. When the nearest gateway is on the other side of a coastline (Elgin IL → Chicago, Yavne IL → Tel Aviv), we pick the actual cargo handoff point, not just the geographically closest one.

What the modes mean

• Ocean — container shipping. Cheapest per kg, slowest. Typical transit Asia → Europe is 28–35 days; Asia → US West Coast 14–21 days.
• Air — fast and expensive. Use for time-critical goods, perishables, or shipments where the cargo value » freight cost. Transit is typically 2–5 days door-to-door including customs.
• Land — truck or rail. Default for domestic and regional moves under ~1,500 km. For US → Canada / EU intra-bloc it’s often the cheapest and fastest option.
• Auto — we pick. Short-haul → land. Long-haul (>6,000 km) → ocean. Medium with a time component → air.

Why the result is “indicative”

The calculator gives you the great-circle distance and a transit-time band based on industry averages. A real freight quote depends on:

• Carrier schedules (most ocean carriers sail weekly, not daily — your effective transit can swing by 4-7 days based on cutoff)
• Fuel surcharges (BAF / EBS), peak-season multipliers (PSS), and chassis fees
• Customs clearance windows (de-minimis thresholds, restricted goods, FDA holds)
• Container availability at origin and rail capacity at destination
• Whether your cargo is dangerous goods (DG) or temperature-controlled — both narrow your carrier options

We use this same calculator under the hood when our AI extracts a customer email and tries to figure out which port to quote against — so the routing logic you see here is exactly what shows up on the operator’s dashboard. Plug in real lanes and the numbers will match what we’d send to a carrier.

Common freight lanes to try

• Shenzhen, China → Long Beach, CA — largest trans-Pacific container lane
• Cabuyao, Philippines → Auckland, New Zealand — Asia → Oceania
• Elgin, IL → Tel Aviv, Israel — inland US → Mediterranean
• Hamburg, Germany → New York, NY — North Europe → US East Coast
• Mumbai, India → Frankfurt, Germany — air freight, electronics + pharma