International freight · Door-to-door transit time
Transit baselines verified 2026-06-09 against Drewry WCI, Flexport OTI, IATA cargo and DHL / FedEx / UPS published guides; customs benchmarks from CBP.
40–51 days
Next stage
Knowing the door-to-door band is step one — the next move is booking the mode that hits your date and watching the legs in real time. Multi-carrier platforms pull live ocean, air and express options side by side, then track pickup, customs and last-mile against the ETA you just built here.
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Door-to-door transit is a journey, not a single number. Express courier lands in roughly 2–5 days, air freight in 5–10, and ocean LCL/FCL in 25–45 days — and that is before port dwell, customs clearance and last-mile add their own days. The carrier transit you are quoted is only the main-carriage leg; the realistic plan stacks pickup, import customs and a schedule-reliability buffer on top.
These are typical published ranges, not guarantees: peak windows (Lunar New Year, Golden Week, US Q4), incomplete documents and regulated commodities all push the band wider. Build your own lane in the tool above.
Primary sources: Drewry WCI · Flexport OTI · CBP · DHL / FedEx / UPS published transit guides
A China → US ocean container (FCL, standard tier) runs 32 days port-to-port — but the realistic door-to-door plan is 47 days (likely range 40–51), after 5 days of origin and destination handling, an expected 3-day customs lag and a 7-day schedule-reliability buffer (ocean on-time performance is only ~52%).
| Mode | Port-to-port | Door-to-door (expected) | Likely range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ocean FCL | 32 days | 47 days | 40–51 days |
| Ocean LCL | 38 days | 56 days | 48–60 days |
| Air freight | 7 days | 16 days | 13–18 days |
| Express courier | 4 days | 9 days | 6–11 days |
Last updated: · Data verified: against Drewry WCI · Flexport OTI · CBP · DHL / FedEx / UPS published transit guides
Three scenarios computed with the exact formula behind the calculator, on benchmarks verified 2026-06-09. Run them yourself above — the stack-bar shows where every day goes.
China → US, ocean FCL, standard tier, booked 10 February 2026: the Lunar New Year window (3 February – 3 March, factories closed around CNY on 17 February) adds +18 peak days to the 32-day base, so the door-to-door expectation moves from 47 days for a June booking to 65 days, with a likely range of 49–69. If your promise date cannot absorb that, the same February shipment by air freight plans at 16 expected days door-to-door.
China → US air freight, standard tier, FDA-regulated food: the expected customs lag only rises from 3 to 4 days (a 25% exam probability against a 10-day regulated-hold mean), so the door-to-door expectation is 17 days versus 16 for general cargo. But the high estimate jumps from 18 to 24 days, because a regulated agency hold adds +5 days at the upper end. Plan inventory against the 24, not the 17 — and file Prior Notice before the flight (see the FDA Prior Notice checker below).
Same corridor, standard tier, three modes: ocean FCL plans at 49 days door-to-door (34 at sea), rail at 28 days (18 on the train, per published Trans-Eurasia schedules), air at 15 days (6 flying). If your cargo can wait three weeks but not seven, rail is the answer. The stack-bar shows where each mode spends its days: ocean loses most to the sea leg plus a 7-day buffer; rail and air mostly to handling and customs.
Port-to-port, this tool's lane benchmarks (verified 2026-06-09 against Drewry WCI and Flexport OTI schedule data) put China → US ocean FCL at 26 days on priority services, 32 days standard and 38 days economy; LCL adds consolidation and runs 32–44 days. Door-to-door is what you should actually plan: at the standard FCL tier the expected total is 47 days (likely range 40–51) once origin handling (3 d), destination handling (2 d), an expected 3-day customs lag and a 7-day reliability buffer are added. Book outside Lunar New Year and Golden Week, or add the peak-season days the calculator shows.
Airport-to-airport benchmarks: 4 days priority, 7 days standard, 9 days economy on China → US (verified 2026-06-09 against IATA and carrier published schedules). Door-to-door, standard air freight comes out at an expected 16 days (range 13–18): 2 days origin handling, 7 days flying and transhipment, an expected 3-day customs lag, 1 day destination handling and a 3-day buffer. Express courier is faster — about 9 days door-to-door expected (range 6–11) — because the courier's broker clears customs in-line and final mile is part of the product.
For general cargo with complete documentation the model expects about 3 days: a 10% exam probability times a 7-day exam mean, plus 90% times a 2-day standard release (CBP exam-rate benchmarks, verified 2026-06-09). Regulated commodities are slower: FDA food carries a 25% exam probability against a 10-day regulated-hold mean (≈4 expected days), USDA 30%, hazmat 35% (≈5 days). Incomplete documentation hurts twice — it raises the exam probability by 5 points and doubles the standard release to 4 days, taking general ocean cargo from 3 to 5 expected days. Express courier entries clear in-line with the courier's own broker: 1 day with complete docs.
Because carrier schedules are unreliable: Maersk-class ocean on-time performance was around 52% in 2024, so quoting the bare port-to-port number means being late roughly every other shipment. The buffer is 20% of base ocean days (capped at 10), 15% rail, 10% air and 5% express, with a 3-day floor — then scaled by your risk posture (×0.5 aggressive, ×1.0 balanced, ×1.5 conservative). On the 32-day China → US FCL lane that is 7 buffer days at the balanced setting.
Lunar New Year 2026 falls on 17 February; factories close around it, so this tool applies a peak window from 3 February to 3 March that adds +18 days to ocean and +7 days to air freight for China-origin shipments. A China → US FCL booking that plans 47 days door-to-door in June becomes 65 expected days (range 49–69) if shipped on 10 February. Golden Week (window 24 September – 14 October) adds +7 ocean / +2 air, and the US Q4 import peak (1 November – 20 December) adds about 25% of base ocean days and 10% of air days for US-bound cargo — 8 extra days on the standard CN→US FCL lane.
Yes — it is the middle path. China → Germany rail runs 16–18 days terminal-to-terminal on published Trans-Eurasia schedules (verified 2026-06-09), or about 28 days door-to-door expected (range 25–30) at the standard tier. Ocean FCL on the same corridor is 34 days port-to-port and ≈49 days door-to-door; air is ≈6 days flying and ≈15 days door-to-door. The calculator only offers rail on CN/KZ/RU → DE lanes and flags any other rail pairing as unsupported.
Coverage is deliberately narrow and honest: China, the United States and Germany lanes (plus Kazakhstan and Russia as rail origins), across ocean FCL/LCL, air freight, express courier and rail. The numbers are means of public 2025 reliability data — Drewry WCI and Flexport OTI for ocean, DHL/FedEx/UPS transit guides for courier, IATA plus carrier schedules for air, Trans-Eurasia timetables for rail and CBP benchmarks for customs — last verified 2026-06-09. They are planning benchmarks, not bookable schedules or quotes. If the dataset goes more than 180 days without re-verification the tool surfaces a staleness notice instead of silently serving old numbers, and unsupported combinations show 'lane not supported' rather than an invented estimate.
Transit time is one axis of the mode decision — these siblings cover the cost and compliance axes for the same shipment.