When your shipment is too large to fit in a single container or a single airplane, partial shipment may be an ideal solution. Discover all about it.
A partial shipment (or split shipment) offers both shippers and carriers greater flexibility and helps optimize freight transport from origin to destination.
What Is Partial Shipment?
A partial shipment (or split shipment) is a process where a single load is transported and delivered in multiple parts, rather than all at once. For instance, in air freight, a split shipment happens when cargo under a single Air Waybill is transported on more than one aircraft.
Similarly, in sea freight, partial shipment may refer to large cargo loads that are divided because they don’t fit into one container.
Depending on the country of import, when you need to transport large volumes of cargo in one go, you or your carrier may decide to have it shipped and delivered partially.
For instance, the US customs allows shippers to submit a single entry for split shipments under certain conditions. This is because the CPB recognizes that airlines often face space, weight, balance, and safety concerns.
As it is formally stated:
“A split shipment consists of merchandise that is capable of being transported on a single conveyance, and that is delivered to and accepted by a carrier in the exporting country as one shipment under one bill of lading or airway bill, and is thus intended by the importer to arrive as a single shipment, but it may be divided by the carrier into different parts which arrive in the United States at different times, often days apart.”
Benefits Of Partial Shipment
Businesses opt for partial shipment strategies for two main reasons, namely:
Cost Optimization
Sometimes, splitting a large shipment into smaller ones allows you to get more economical quotes. For example, you can avoid oversized cargo fees or lower-cost LCL shipping options – instead of FCL.
Capacity Constraints
Because shipping containers and aircraft cargo hold have limited space and weight capacities, splitting shipments helps accommodate your entire load when it exceeds the available limits.
Sensitive Cargo
In cases where a shipment includes time-sensitive or perishable items, and capacity is limited at the time, you can deliver the most urgent parts of your shipment sooner.
Challenges Of Partial Shipment
Because you deal with multiple deliveries, customs clearance procedures, and also paperwork, shipping partially may entail:
- Higher Shipping Costs: Splitting your load into multiple shipments instead of one consolidated delivery leads to increased overall transportation expenses.
- Increased Complexity: Managing multiple instances for a single shipment is more complex than shipping everything at once. It requires more administrative work, separate tracking, labels, and documentation for each bit.
- Greater Error Potential: More touchpoints in the shipping process increase the risk of mistakes.
- Bigger Carbon Footprint: Multiple shipments eventually require more packing materials and more fuel consumption, increasing the importer’s carbon footprint.
- Potential Delays & Damage/Loss: Unexpected delays due to factors like weather or carrier issues, may keep part of your shipment stuck at the dock for longer than expected. Meanwhile, the risk of damage and loss increases.
How About Partial Load Shipping? (Disambiguation)
It’s important to distinguish partial shipment from partial load shipping or partial truckload (PTL) when it comes to road transport.
Partial load shipping is a process that consolidates multiple shipments from different shippers into a single container or truck trailer.
This shipping method typically applies to road transport for loads that are too small for a full container and for instances where shippers want to avoid multiple handling that’s typically associated with LTL (Less Than A Truckload) shipping.
Air Cargo Split Shipments
Air freight is particularly prone to split shipment occurrences. This happens when an air carrier transports cargo, even if covered under a single Air Waybill, on more than one aircraft. Reasons for this include:
- Load Balancing: Airlines must precisely balance weight, center of gravity, and fuel efficiency for safety and operational efficiency, sometimes requiring larger shipments to be split.
- Capacity Constraints: When a shipment exceeds the available space or weight, it’s often split into smaller parts in order to accommodate other cargo or passenger luggage.
- Priority Shipments: Oftentimes, high-priority or time-sensitive cargo is shipped before more conventional goods. The remaining cargo is then distributed to other shipments across multiple flights. Especially on passenger flights, the first thing to get bumped is the cargo.
- Operational Efficiency: Airlines may split shipments to optimize their overall network efficiency across different routes and destinations. While inconvenient for shippers, the carrier’s goal is usually to get the remaining cargo on the next available flight, often resulting in negligible delay.
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