Landed cost explained: what US buyers really pay for imported tile
Jose Cabrera · May 19, 2026
A factory in Foshan emails you back. The price is $4.20 per square meter. You feel like you just won. Three months later, the container hits Miami and somehow you are at $11.80 per square meter and your finance team wants a meeting.
This is what landed cost actually is, and how to read a quote so the number on the page is the number on the invoice.
What "landed" means in plain English
Landed cost is the total amount you pay to get a product from the factory floor to your warehouse or job site, with no surprises in between.
It is the number that matters. Not FOB. Not CIF. Not the line item that says "ex-works".
A real landed cost quote includes:
- The factory price (the FOB number).
- Ocean freight to the US port.
- US import duty.
- Customs broker fees.
- Terminal handling at the port.
- Inland trucking to your address.
Add those up and you get the real cost of the product sitting on your floor. Everything else is a partial picture.
The five most common quotes you will see
| Term | What is in it | What is NOT in it | |---|---|---| | FOB | Factory + load on ship at origin port | Ocean freight, duty, customs, inland | | CIF | FOB + ocean freight + insurance | Duty, customs broker, inland | | CFR | FOB + ocean freight only | Insurance, duty, customs, inland | | DDP | Everything to your door, duty paid | Nothing (this is true landed) | | Landed Miami | FOB + freight + duty + customs + trucking to Miami | Nothing in Miami (this is what we quote) |
If the supplier ends a quote at FOB and says "you handle the rest", they are not bad people. They are just selling you a partial number. You still have a project to plan, and FOB does not plan a project.
Worked example, real numbers
40-foot high cube container of porcelain tile, 80x80 cm, rectified, from Foshan to Miami:
- FOB Foshan: 5,800 USD
- Ocean freight Foshan to Miami: 2,400 USD (varies by month, sometimes 1,600, sometimes 4,200)
- US import duty on porcelain tile (HS 6907.21): roughly 8.5 percent on the CIF value, so about 700 USD
- Customs broker fee: 250 USD
- Terminal handling charges at Port of Miami: 380 USD
- Inland trucking 30 miles to Doral warehouse: 480 USD
Total landed Doral: 10,010 USD for one container of tile.
Divide by the square meters in the container (one 40HC holds roughly 550 to 700 square meters of porcelain tile depending on thickness and pallet pattern) and you get a landed per-square-meter cost between $14.30 and $18.20.
The FOB price said $5,800 / 700 = $8.30 per square meter. The actual landed number is more than double.
This is the gap that kills new importers. Not because the duty is hidden. Because the FOB number is the only number on the email and they planned around it.
What changes the math
Three line items move a lot more than people expect:
Ocean freight is volatile. A 40-foot container from Asia to Miami ran 3,400 USD in spring 2025, 1,800 USD in late 2025, and could be 4,800 USD by the time you book this year. The factory does not control this. The freight forwarder controls this. Lock the freight rate before signing the PO.
Duty depends on the HS code. Porcelain tile is 6907.21 at 8.5 percent — though Chinese porcelain also carries antidumping and countervailing duties that can push the effective rate above 130 percent. Ceramic tile is 6907.22 at 10 percent. Wood doors are 4418 at 4.9 percent. Steel doors are 7308 at zero for now. If your supplier classifies the goods wrong, you pay either too much or you get the load held at customs while CBP figures it out. A customs broker who knows your category is worth their fee.
Inland trucking is local. From the port to a warehouse in Doral is 30 miles and 480 USD. From the port to a job site in Orlando is 230 miles and 1,900 USD. If your project is in Orlando, do not assume the Miami-based quote includes it.
How to ask for landed cost from a supplier
Most overseas factories will quote you FOB by default because that is what they actually control. To get to landed, you have one of three options:
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Ask the supplier for a DDP quote. They will partner with a freight forwarder and quote you the full landed number, plus their margin on the freight. Easiest for you. Most expensive of the three.
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Get the FOB price from the supplier, then get a separate freight quote from a US-based freight forwarder. Add duty (from your customs broker), customs fees, and trucking yourself. Most work, most control.
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Use a sourcing partner that quotes everything landed in the first quote. The supplier gets paid FOB, the partner handles the freight and customs side, and the buyer sees one number with one invoice.
There is no wrong choice. The wrong choice is signing a PO based on the FOB number and finding out about the rest in stages.
What we do at Nexo
Every quote we send is landed Miami. That means the number on page one of the quote is the same number on the invoice you pay. Freight, duty, customs broker, terminal, inland. All in.
If you want it landed somewhere other than Miami, we will quote that too. Orlando, Tampa, Atlanta, Houston, anywhere reasonable on the trucking grid.
We do not quote FOB unless you ask. The point of a sourcing service is to give the buyer a real number, not a partial one.
The bottom line
If you remember nothing else from this article, remember this: FOB is a price, not a quote. A quote is the number you actually pay. Make sure your supplier or your sourcing partner gives you the second one, not the first.
And if the math feels heavy, that is a fair signal that buying full containers direct is not for every project. For one-off remodels, a local distributor charging 40 percent over factory is still cheaper than figuring out customs codes for an afternoon. For developers, GCs, and contractors moving real volume, the math works the other way once you have done it twice.