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CBM & Chargeable Weight Calculator

Cartons in, chargeable units out: CBM, gross kg and per-channel chargeable weight (express 200, air 167, sea 1000 kg per CBM; W/M rounding). Free, no signup.

How to read the chargeable column

Forwarders do not price the space your freight takes or the weight it carries — they price the larger of the two, converted into their own unit. The ratios below are the conventions the workbench ships with, drawn from the public rate card of 2026-09-28; your forwarder's contract may differ, and in the workbench every one of them is editable.

Express and air (per kg). Chargeable kg = max(actual kg, CBM × ratio), rounded up to 0.5 kg. Ratios around 200 kg/CBM for international express and 167 kg/CBM for air consolidation. Dense freight pays actual weight; anything airy pays for air.

Sea LCL and sea+truck (W/M). Revenue tons = max(CBM, metric tons), rounded up to 0.1. The 1 CBM = 1000 kg convention makes sea the mode where volume, not weight, almost always governs — which is why per-carton packing decisions matter more on sea freight than on any other channel.

Full containers are a cliff, not a slope. A 20GP takes about 28 CBM and a 40HQ about 67 CBM (also weight-capped). Below the cliff you pay per W/M; at the cliff the container price takes over and the marginal cubic meter is suddenly free. The workbench computes your exact break-even instead of guessing with rules of thumb.

Rounding is a real cost. Because chargeable amounts round up, a shipment at 10.05 CBM pays for 10.1, and a 21.4 kg parcel pays for 21.5 kg. Near a rounding boundary, adding a little more freight is literally free — the break-point analysis in the workbench finds those spots automatically.

From chargeable units to a price

Multiply any row's chargeable units by your own quoted rate and you have that channel's freight cost for this shipment. The workbench does that across every channel at once, adds surcharges and per-shipment fees the same way forwarders do, and puts the options side by side with their service scope — because a port-to-port line and a DDP line are never the same purchase, whatever the totals say.

Price this shipment across channels Dim weight calculator

Everything computes locally in your browser. No upload, no account, no rates required — this page deliberately shows physics, not prices. Public rate card verified 2026-09-28.