Search UK final-mile delivery rates by destination. LCL/part-load and FCL are priced on completely different bases, so they're kept as separate modes — see the caveats at the bottom before quoting.
Step 3 — Cost settings
| Supplier | Fuel % | Palletising £/pallet | Pallet cost £/pallet | Confirmed? |
|---|
One row per commercial relationship — Palletways, Pallex and UPN share a row because they're all sold through Cross Country Carriers, who set a single fuel figure across the three. Each supplier's settings are applied to their own rows in the results below, so different hauliers can carry different fuel percentages and pallet terms without any of it being hard-coded. Palletising is the carrier's own charge to build and wrap the pallets (CCC do it at their warehouse after collection) — it only applies when cargo arrives loose, and a supplier showing £0 is treated as not offering the service at all, so they drop out of the comparison entirely for loose cargo. Enter a palletising figure for them and they rejoin it automatically. Pallet cost is the charge for the physical pallets, and only applies on top when empties aren't exchanged on delivery. Anything left at 0 is genuinely unconfirmed, not free — see the Confirmed column.
Notes & caveats
• All figures are buy-side (cost) rates, ex-VAT, with no margin applied — for sell pricing, add Think Prime's standard margin.
• Air delivery (UCH Logistics) is a third mode. Heathrow and Manchester are separate cards with their own postcode zoning, weight breaks, formulas and fuel — the same postcode is often zoned very differently between them, so the airport selector matters. Heathrow: £8–£40 basic + 8p–40p/kg up to 500kg, then a flat heavy-weight band table to 5,000kg, plus a £35 import delivery surcharge, all × 20% fuel (the surcharge sits inside the fuel bracket, as printed). Manchester: £11–£38.50 basic + 9p–35.5p/kg to 200kg, a second table to 1,000kg, no import delivery surcharge, × 18% fuel. Above those ceilings, or on an "Ask" zone, it returns quote-on-request rather than extrapolating.
• UCH apply their own volumetric rule — 6m³ = 1,000kg (166.67 kg/m³) — which is not the 333.33 kg/m³ used by the LCL groupage suppliers. Chargeable weight is the greater of gross and volumetric.
• Air runs in both directions. Import is airport → UK address (the zonal delivery rate, plus Heathrow's £35 import delivery surcharge). Export is UK address → airport: the same zonal rate as a collection, plus Heathrow's £20 export collection surcharge, plus screening — Heathrow primary 12p/kg (min £25) or secondary 15p/kg (min £45), screening-only and airline-delivery-only options also priced; Manchester primary 10p/kg (min £12.50) or FREDDs & ETD 12p/kg (min £25), plus export warehouse handling at 3p/kg (min £15, capped £100). UCH screen all unknown cargo unless specifically told otherwise.
• On export, screening and warehouse handling sit outside the fuel calculation — UCH's own notes state fuel does not apply to screening, warehouse handling or storage. Fuel applies to the transport leg and its collection surcharge only.
• UCH air accessorials are not included: AM/PM and timed deliveries, tail lift, HAZ, waiting time, palletisation (£15/pallet), rework/breakdown on export (£0.06/kg + £10/pallet), and at Heathrow the £7/pallet charge where pallets can't be exchanged.
• LCL, FCL and Air are separate modes because they're priced on completely different bases. LCL is per pallet or per weight/CBM band across the six groupage suppliers; FCL is a whole-vehicle move from Proactive, priced on road miles from Felixstowe per container (0–500 mile card, £274 to £1,960), plus £25 VBS per container and £50 DVS per container inside the M25.
• FCL distance is looked up from the delivery postcode — the postcode is resolved to coordinates and routed by road from the selected port, which should land close to a Google Maps driving distance. With no internet it falls back to straight-line distance × 1.25 and says so, and in every case the mileage box stays editable, with a typed figure always taking precedence. Beyond 500 miles Proactive's card stops and it's quote-on-request.
• FCL rate cards are held per port. Only Felixstowe is on file (Proactive). Other PODs will still work out the mileage so the lane can be priced the moment a card arrives, but they show no rate rather than borrowing Felixstowe's — port haulage rates don't travel between ports.
• Proactive's fuel surcharge is 17.5% this week, applied to the mileage band rate (not to VBS or DVS). They review it weekly, so re-check before quoting.
• The Proactive card doesn't state whether the rate varies by container size (20'/40'/45') — it reads as a flat per-container price. Worth confirming before quoting a 45'.
• Every row is costed identically: Base + Fuel + Palletising = Total. Base comes from the supplier's own tariff (per discrete pallet × pallet count for Palletways/Pallex/UPN; a weight/CBM band price for the whole shipment for Global Freight, Bridgap and Eagle).
• Current per-carrier figures baked in: fuel — CCC 15%, Eagle 16%, Bridgap 13%, Global Freight not quoted; palletising — CCC £20/pallet, Eagle £15/pallet, Bridgap £15/pallet, Global Freight not quoted. Fuel percentages are reviewed weekly by the carriers, so re-check them before quoting.
• Palletising is the carrier's charge, not ours, and only applies when cargo arrives loose. A supplier with no palletising figure is treated as not offering the service and drops out of the loose-cargo comparison entirely — currently that's Global Freight only.
• Pallet exchange at destination is assumed, so no pallet cost is charged on any row. None of the carriers has quoted a non-exchange pallet cost anyway; if a booking genuinely won't exchange empties, that cost sits outside these figures.
• Postcode matching uses the outward code only (area + district, e.g. "SW1" or "IP1") — it does not check inward-code-level exceptions.
• Pallet tier is estimated from L x W x H and weight against CCC's published pallet spec sheet (Micro ≤150kg/60cm, Quarter ≤300kg/80cm, Half ≤600kg/120cm, Full ≤1,200kg/220cm, all on a 120x120cm base) — treat as an estimate, especially for irregular or fragile cargo; confirm with warehouse/ops before booking.
• Loose-carton volume assumes ~80% stacking efficiency on a 120x120cm base — real efficiency varies with carton shape and how well they nest.
• Chargeable weight for the weight-band suppliers uses the higher of actual weight or volumetric weight — Global Freight, Bridgap and Eagle all publish weight bands and CBM bands side by side, and the worse of the two is taken.
• Palletways "LOCAL" zone, Pallex "LOCAL" zone and UPN zone 1 each charge a single flat rate with no Premium/Economy split, per their source tariffs — flagged inline where it applies.
• Eagle shows "POA" above 10,000kg/30m³ and for remote UK/Ireland postcode areas, per their own tariff — contact them directly for those. Eagle's postcode list has one internal ambiguity (PE20 falls in both their Zone 2 and Zone 3 ranges — this tool defaults to Zone 2, first match) worth raising with them, and doesn't model their "N1C" sub-code separately.
• Youngs/Interspan (the ECU-tied combined product) is deliberately excluded — ECU has confirmed that rate is only bookable when the main ocean/air freight is also booked with ECU, so it isn't a standalone comparison point. Eagle Freight Terminal here is their own direct tariff to Think Prime (EFT Tariff Jan 2026), unrelated to ECU.
• Accessorials beyond the Step 3 settings (AM/timed/tail-lift/Saturday/customs, Eagle's Retail Plus/Amazon charges, CCC's handball/timed charges) are not included — see the workbook's "Raw" tabs for the full accessorial schedules per supplier.
• The Liverpool/Manchester rate pairing is still unconfirmed with the hauliers directly — see project notes.
• Source workbook: Think Prime UK Delivery Rates - Working - 2026-08-27 v4.xlsx (Raw sheets per supplier, Fitted Rates, 3-Way Comparison, Pallet Comparison tabs).
