How much is shipping to the USA from Canada?

How much is shipping to the USA from Canada?

It is impossible to answer this question with a simple response because many variables come into play for a particular shipment. Which courier have you chosen? When must the goods arrive at the destination? How heavy and big is the parcel? Is insurance required or special handling? Are the goods liable to duties and taxes? This blog sheds some light on those questions and introduces Secureship, whose speciality is finding you the most economical choice for your shipment. But this online shipping broker can do much more – save you time and provide you with answers to any question you may have about shipping to the USA or anywhere worldwide.

Table of Contents

• What it Might Cost to Ship to the USA
• The Parcel’s Weight and Size
• Secureship
• Conclusion

What it Might Cost to Ship to the USA

Suppose you need to ship a documents-only parcel of 500 g from Toronto to Los Angeles, USA. The cheapest method, at $32, would be to use Canada Post’s Expedited Parcel service, and that would take six business days for its arrival. However, with UPS, it could arrive the next day for $222.

The next example – a 5 kg parcel – shows the range of possibilities and prices with a few carriers and their services, and underlines how difficult it is to answer ‘How much is shipping to the USA from Canada?’

• UPS Early AM ($434) – overnight service
• FedEx International First ($475) – next day service
• Canada Post Xpresspost ($100) – 4 business days
• UPS Standard ($34) – 4 business days

The point from these examples is that who you ship with and when you need the parcel delivered can have a huge impact on how much you pay.

The Parcel’s Weight and Size

It is obvious to state that a parcel’s weight influences shipping costs – heavier parcels are more expensive to transport. So, one might then expect that shipping a kilogram of feathers to cost the same as a kilogram of bricks … but because of billable weight, that would be misleading.

Couriers determine billable weight – also known as dimensional weight – by measuring a parcel’s length, width, and height, and then multiplying those numbers together. This calculated value is divided by either 139 (if using Imperial units) or 5,000 for metric measurements.

The resulting number is compared to the actual weight, and whichever is larger determines the shipping fee.

Therefore, for a box with a kilogram of feathers, its billable weight would be far larger than for a kilogram of bricks, and so too is its shipping cost.

Secureship

As shown above, even shipping a modestly sized parcel could be very expensive. But Secureship’s bulk buying agreement with several well known couriers can help you save up to 50% on shipping fees from anywhere in Canada to the USA or indeed to anywhere in the world.

Secureship offers other advantages, like saving you time. From your computer, it takes only a few minutes to create an account, find a courier to transport your parcel within your budget and time requirements, and arrange for parcel pick-up.

And further, if you have any queries, its website offers a Guru bot with answers to over 5,000 questions. As well, the Learning Centre houses 16 articles on various aspects of shipping; Country Shipping Guides is a collection of the importation rules and regulations, including duties and taxes levied on incoming goods, for 140-plus territories and states; and finally, peruse our expanding series of blogs that cover a range of general shipping topics and explain the costs of shipping to the USA, England, Australia, India, and New Zealand.

Conclusion

How much it costs to ship a parcel to the USA from Canada depends on how quickly you want it to arrive (the sooner, the more expensive) and which courier you select for the job. But it also varies depending on other factors. Certainly a heavier parcel costs more but a larger container with the same weight will likely also increase costs because of its billable weight (sometimes called dimensional weight).

To help you ship goods economically, remember Secureship, whose intuitive online platform and bulk buying power with Purolator, FedEx, and UPS can save you up to 50% on shipments to the USA or any foreign country. And our website is loaded with help and information – a Guru bot with thousands of answers to shipping questions plus hundreds of articles about shipping in general and shipping to scores of specific countries.