Air freight or courier for a two hundred piece order

Two hundred sets is the awkward size. Too big for a simple courier parcel, too small to fill a shipment on its own. The choice between courier and air freight changes the cost and the clearing process.

Courier is door to door. The company handles the flight, the customs entry and the delivery. You pay one invoice including duty and handling, and the parcel arrives. For anything up to about a hundred kilograms, this is usually the simplest option and often not much more expensive once you count the agent fees that freight avoids.

Air freight is airport to airport. The goods fly to a destination airport, and a clearing agent takes over from there. You pay freight, then duty, then agent fees, then local delivery. For two hundred sets of scrubs, the total is usually lower than courier, but only once the volume is high enough to absorb the fixed agent cost.

The deciding factor is rarely the number. It is who is clearing.

If you are a hospital with a procurement office that clears imports regularly, air freight is straightforward. If you are a clinic making its first international order, courier is worth the premium because it removes a process you have not done before.

There is also a timing difference. Couriers move daily. Freight consolidations leave on scheduled flights, so a shipment may wait two or three days for the next one.

Our advice is to ask for both quotes at the same weight and compare the landed total, not the freight line. Most buyers are surprised by how close they are.