Nothing about an overseas crate prices the way a domestic package does. Once it leaves the country it stops being a parcel question and becomes an ocean or air freight one, built from the crate's cubic measurement, its weight, and a piece of paperwork most first-timers never see coming: the wood itself has to clear its own rule before the cargo inside it clears anything. No dollar figure sits on this page, because nobody honestly prices this without the crate in front of them.
A crate that ships fine within the US can still get stopped at the other end over the crate, not the cargo.
A crate is a handling instruction as much as a container: it tells every carrier the load is rigid, forklift-friendly and built to survive rough handling, which is exactly the profile that pushes cargo out of package networks and into freight. Our domestic crate shipping guide shows where that line sits inside the United States. Crossing a border tightens it further, because international parcel programs run their own size and weight ceilings on top of the domestic ones, and a crated shipment rarely clears both. In practice, a crate leaving the country is almost always one of three things: space shared inside somebody else's container, a container of its own, or air cargo priced by chargeable weight for something urgent or high in value relative to its size.
This is the part a first-time exporter usually finds out about at the worst possible time. The US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service puts the rule plainly on its own export guidance page, read 2026-08-28: “As an exporter, you need to know if the country you are exporting to requires wood packaging material (WPM) to be ISPM 15-compliant.” The same page names 45 countries and the entire European Union as requiring it. Compliant wood is either heat-treated to a minimum core temperature of 56°C for at least 30 minutes or fumigated, and it carries a quality mark from an accredited inspection agency once treated.
This is squarely an international-only concern. Our wood shipping crates guide covers why a crate moving inside the United States does not need this treatment or the mark at all. The moment the same crate is headed to one of the 47-plus countries or territories above, that exemption ends, and responsibility for knowing which rule applies sits with the exporter, not the carrier or the crate builder, per the same APHIS page.
Two things follow from that in practice. If you are building new, use lumber that already carries the heat-treatment mark, or have a crating shop that documents the treatment for you. If you are reusing an old crate, check it for the mark before you assume it still qualifies — a bare, unstamped crate is the single most avoidable reason a shipment sits at a foreign port.
Ocean and air freight both bill on a chargeable figure that compares actual weight to a volume-based equivalent and charges whichever is higher. A crate's thick plywood walls buy outside inches the same way they do on a domestic parcel, only now that extra volume is competing against a cubic-metre or dimensional-weight rate instead of a flat carton price. Our LCL shipping guide walks through how that weight-or-volume comparison is actually run.
A crate small enough to share space rides inside someone else's container and is billed for loading and unloading at both ends on top of the transport charge. A crate or a shipment large enough to fill a container outright skips that handling but takes on the full container's own paperwork, covered on our container shipping cost guide.
Duty, a customs entry, and often a bond are the importer's responsibility and never show up inside a freight quote. Who owes what and when is set by the terms of sale agreed with the other side, which our cross-border pallet guide covers alongside the Incoterms rules that decide it.
Put those three together and a crate overseas prices the same way a container does: several separate charges from several separate parties, added up by somebody who has all the details, not read off a single rate card.
The outside dimensions and finished weight of the crate as built, not the contents alone. The commodity and, if you have it, its tariff classification. Whether the wood is heat-treated and marked, and if not, whether the destination on your list actually requires it. The origin and destination, named as ports or as door addresses. A ready date. And the terms of sale, if you and the buyer or seller on the other end have agreed them already. Send those through freight review and the number that comes back covers the ocean or air leg, the handling at both ends, and the paperwork gate above — not just the part of the move that looks cheapest in isolation.
Which countries require ISPM 15-compliant wood changes over time, and a destination's customs authority, not this page, has the final say on what it accepts. Confirm the current list and any country-specific documentation before you build or ship.
There is no flat number, and no page on this site will print an invented one. Once a crate leaves the parcel network it is priced as ocean or air freight against the origin, the destination, the cubic measurement, the weight and the wood's own paperwork — five inputs a person needs before a quote means anything.
Whenever the destination requires it, which is most places. The US plant health agency states that as an exporter you need to know if the country you are shipping to requires wood packaging material to be ISPM 15 compliant, and names 45 countries plus the entire European Union as requiring it (aphis.usda.gov, read 2026-08-28). Domestic US shipments do not carry this requirement; a crate leaving the country usually does.
Whichever is greater. Ocean and air freight both price against a chargeable figure that compares the actual weight to the cubic measurement, and a rigid crate with thick plywood walls tends to lose on the volume side even when it is light. Get both numbers on your specific crate before assuming weight is what a quote is built on.
No. The calculator prices US domestic parcels through USPS, UPS and FedEx. A crate crossing a border is freight, quoted by a person against the details above, so send those through freight review instead.
Once your volume approaches what a container actually holds, sharing space stops paying for itself the way it did on a small load. There is no single crate size where that happens; it depends on the rate you are quoted for each option, so ask for both and compare.