What is freight? Types and how it is calculated when shipping from Brazil

What is freight? It is the price paid to move goods from origin to destination. For express shipping from Brazil, it is calculated from the chargeable weight (the higher of actual and volumetric weight), the destination zone and the service chosen, plus optional services and surcharges. Import duty is not part of freight.

In practice the question comes up when a quote is higher than expected, or when an overseas customer asks "who pays the freight?". Knowing the parts of the price lets you cut cost where it really sits, not where it seems to sit.

What goes into the final freight price?

Three blocks, added together. The DHL Express 2026 Service and Rate Guide for Brazil sums it up as base price, plus optional services, plus additional charges, equals total price. The base price comes from weight, zone and service speed. The table shows what drives each component and where you have room to act.

The amounts in each row change by route and period, so the quote for each shipment is the reference.

The logic does not change. Almost every expensive freight bill is explained by one of these six rows.

How does weight enter the freight calculation?

Through the chargeable weight, which is the higher of the actual scale weight and the volumetric weight. At DHL Express, the volumetric weight of each piece is length times width times height in centimetres, divided by 5,000, a standard IATA method (Source: DHL Express 2026 Service and Rate Guide, Brazil).

An example. A 40 x 30 x 30 cm box holding 2 kg of clothing has a volumetric weight of 7.2 kg, and freight is calculated on that number. Switching to 35 x 25 x 20 cm, if the product fits, brings the volumetric weight down to 3.5 kg. The DHL Express rate table moves in 0.5 kg steps in the lower brackets and, from 30.1 kg, per additional kilo.

To measure shipments with more than one piece, the guide on volumetric weight in Brazil explains the formula in detail.

What is a destination zone and why does it affect the price?

A zone is a group of countries that share the same price band from Brazil. In the 2026 rate guide, exports use seven zones, and each destination country falls into one of them.

Some examples from the guide:

• zone 1: Uruguay;
• zone 2: United States;
• zone 4: United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland;
• zone 5: Taiwan and Thailand;
• zone 6: Turkey, Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates;
• zone 7: South Africa, Ukraine and Zambia.

If you sell abroad, this has a direct use. When choosing your first export market, the zone belongs in the margin calculation as much as the exchange rate does.

Which surcharges can appear on a freight invoice?

Surcharges cover situations outside the standard flow, and some depend only on how you prepare the shipment. The DHL Express rate guide lists, among others:

• fuel, calculated from the average daily prices of jet fuel and diesel published by the US Department of Energy;
• remote area, when pickup or delivery is in a distant or hard-to-reach location;
• overweight handling, for a piece whose actual or volumetric weight exceeds 70 kg;
• oversize piece, when the longest side exceeds 100 cm or the second longest exceeds 80 cm;
• non-conveyable piece, for packages outside the standard corrugated box format;
• peak demand, applied in high-demand periods with advance notice on MyDHL+;
• data entry, when the waybill is on paper rather than electronic.

The fuel surcharge is the most common and the one that moves most. According to the same guide, it applies to transport, optional services and other surcharges, and the index is reviewed every month.

You can avoid three of them through packaging and data: oversize, non-conveyable and data entry. A box of the right size and an electronic waybill take that weight off the bill.

What is the difference between prepaid and collect freight?

Prepaid freight means the sender pays for transport at origin. Collect freight means the recipient pays. In international trade, the choice usually comes from the commercial agreement and is recorded in the sale's Incoterm.

At DHL Express, an importer in Brazil can arrange and pay for freight before dispatch through the receiver-pays service: they request pickup in the origin country via MyDHL+ and pay when booking. Import taxes then follow the standard DTU (Duties & Taxes Unpaid) process and are paid by the recipient at clearance (Source: DHL Express 2026 Service and Rate Guide, Brazil).

If your overseas customer prefers to pay for transport, the article on receiver-pays shipping shows when that model makes sense.

Duties can also go the other way. With the DTP (Duty Tax Paid) service, the sender takes on the destination country's duties and taxes, and the amount is billed to them afterwards.

And what about "FOB freight" and "CIF freight"? They are Incoterms, not types of freight. Under FOB, the seller delivers the goods on board the vessel at the port of shipment and the buyer pays the main freight; under CIF, the seller pays freight and insurance to the destination port. For both rules side by side with examples, see the guide to the FOB Incoterm.

Does freight change the import duty in Brazil?

Yes, and it is the point that surprises first-time importers most. Under Brazil's Customs Regulation, the cost of transporting goods to the customs port or airport of unloading is part of the customs value, which is the tax base for import duty (Decree 6,759/2009, art. 77, consulted in October 2026).

More expensive freight also raises the tax base.

That is why comparing two import quotes means looking at total cost, not only the freight line. If you are setting up your first operation, the guide to importing into Brazil shows where freight fits in the rest of the process.

Online sellers feel this in conversion. For store strategies such as free shipping built into the price or regional rate bands, see the guide to e-commerce shipping costs in Brazil.

Frequently asked questions about freight from Brazil

Sources

• DHL Express Brazil: 2026 Service and Rate Guide (in Portuguese)
• Planalto: Decree 6,759/2009, Customs Regulation (art. 77, in Portuguese)

Quote freight from Brazil with every line in view

Chargeable weight, zone, service, optional services and surcharges: once you can see each line, it is easy to decide where to save and where predictability is worth paying for. With a business account you can quote each shipment with your own dimensions, follow invoices in one place and choose who pays freight and duties on every shipment.

To ship with more control over cost, open a DHL Express business account.