[imc-tech-solidarity] costs for shipping less than a container

[evan@protest.net]

So one of the things that has come up when i've been talking to pablo in
sao paulo and some of the folks in buenos aires is if we could ship
amounts smaller than a container. I've asked the freight forwarder we've
been working with and he says the price for shiping smaller amounts is
$183 from Oakland to either Santos (Sao Paulo) or Buenos Aires.

I've done some math based on what we fit in the container for ecuador. On
a palette filled full height is 2.7 square meters. We fit 50 computers on
each palette and 30 monitors. That means we can get 11 monitors per square
meter and 18.5 computers per sq meter.

For ecuador we had 10 paletts of monitors, 4 and a half of computers and 5
and a half of other stuff. We had some extra space but i'd say that you
need about as much space for keyboards, mice, cables, and networking gear
as you do for computers.

That means that for shipping's sake each computer takes up .198 sq meters
of space. Rounded up it's 0.2 sq meters. Doing the math we can ship
computers in quantities as small as 5 at a time for $36.6 per computers.
If we get up to around 120 computers we'll get the 20 foot container which
costs us $18 per computer to ship. With the full 40 foot container we were
paying $10 per computer.

For people to better see the costs i've done up a little spreadsheet.

# Shipped   Cost    Per Computer
1           $183    $183.00
2           $183    $91.50
3           $183    $61.00
4           $183    $45.75
5           $183    $36.60
10          $366    $36.60
15          $549    $36.60
20          $732    $36.60
30          $1,098  $36.60
40          $1,464  $36.60
50          $1,830  $36.60
75          $2,300  $30.67
100         $2,300  $23.00
125         $2,300  $18.40
150         $2,300  $15.33
200         $2,500  $12.50
250         $2,500  $10.00
300         $2,500  $8.33

As you can see, shipping at least 5, 150, or 200 computers saves us money.
Those are the points where we can afford to upgrade to a larger form of
shipping.

I think on the whole this is pretty positive. We could do several
shipments of 30 computers for $1000 each. It's several times as much money
per computer but it does allow us to ship more often without having to
build up the huge number of computers required for a full 40 foot
container. Of course for every computer we ship in small quanities we
could ship 4.39 if we were doing larger quanities.

in solidarity,
evan

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