IT Shipping: How to Ship IT Equipment (International and Domestic)

When you’re shipping IT equipment – such as servers, CPUs, routers, and switches – you’ll face a series of unique challenges depending on:

• Your bill of materials. It matters what type of equipment that you’re shipping, this includes but isn’t limited to:

  • The brand of the equipment (whether you’re shipping Cisco, Dell, etc).

  • The “control” status of your hardware.

  • The condition of your hardware. Whether you’re shipping new equipment or used equipment.

• Where you’re shipping from and shipping to: 

  • Factoring in the type of location you’re shipping to and from, e.g. office, warehouse, or data center. Each location type has different challenges that need to be project managed upfront.

  • The factor that has the largest impact is whether you’re shipping domestically, or internationally. For international shipments, where you’re shipping from and to  a critical role in the paperwork you need to provide to pass through customs of your destination country. For example, shipping electronics from the USA to India requires obtaining different permits, documentation, and approvals than if you were shipping from the USA to Brazil.

There are plenty of other factors to consider, including: the value of what you’re shipping and the potential loss in operating costs if your shipment doesn’t arrive on time. This will affect what sort of logistics solution you end up going with.

The optimal shipping solution for you will vary depending on the factors above, but also your operational processes, such as how often you’re shipping and how the IT equipment will be reported on your financial books. 

At FGX, we provide a comprehensive global IT shipping service for businesses that factors in all of those considerations. FGX provides coverage in 174+ countries. We have an untarnished record of successful shipments, even in notoriously difficult and tightly regulated countries like Brazil and China. If you need to ship IT equipment, please feel free to reach out to us here.

Or keep reading, to get a general overview of the best practices for IT shipping, for both domestic and international shipments. 

IT Shipping: Shipping Domestically

When you’re shipping IT equipment domestically, the two key things to consider are:

• How are you going to pack your equipment? Packing IT equipment correctly will make sure it doesn’t get damaged on its route. Packing includes a) how the IT equipment is packed individually and b) whether or not to palletize your shipment.  
  
  

• What delivery method / mode of transportation will you use? There are two main types of delivery models. First, there’s the hub-and-spoke model, like the kind used by UPS, FedEx, and DHL. This is when your package is part of a larger, non-IT specific freight and your shipment gets handed off between vehicles on the way to its final destination. For example, if you’re sending something from Phoenix to Chicago, the hub-and-spoke model might take your shipment from Phoenix to Los Angeles and then Los Angeles to Austin, before finally heading from Austin to Chicago. As your IT shipment bounces through these hubs, they will get unloaded and reloaded to new vehicles multiple times, which increases the chances that something is mishandled, damaged, or lost.

Hub-and-spoke models are great for large scale consumer shipping needs, as it lowers transportation costs, it’s not ideal for expensive and mission critical projects, like shipping IT hardware.

In contrast to the hub and spoke model, there’s the direct model, which is the method that FGX uses. We believe that IT equipment should always be shipped on a direct delivery model – it’s more secure and you’re going to get lower variance timelines, which means you’ll have a better idea exactly of when your shipment will arrive at its final destination. Also, above a certain shipment size, direct modes of transportation often end up becoming more cost effective than using a courier, due to bulk pricing.

How to Pack IT Equipment 

If you’re shipping IT equipment that’s new and purchased from the OEM, you can generally keep your equipment in its original packing.

For example, here’s a photo of the inside of a server box, shipped to FGX from the original manufacturer. 

You can see it's securely packaged. But this isn’t always the case and sometimes items arrive at our shipping centers damaged, like the laptop below.

That’s why, unlike courier services such as FedEx, FGX inspects each package before it leaves our warehouse, which is a crucial part of the FGX Manifest. 

During the FGX Manifest, we run a detailed inspection to confirm that: 

• The devices you’re looking to ship are actually the ones being shipped

• The items are properly and securely packed

• For international shipments, we get ahead of any  potential customs issues, from inspecting the labels on the devices to their packaging

If we do find any issues with the box or devices, we’ll inform you so that we can come up with a resolution, whether that means re-routing the equipment or helping you obtain a replacement device from your hardware vendor. This saves you a lot of time and money, because we get ahead of any potential roadblocks upfront. 

The next consideration when packing your IT equipment is deciding whether or not you want your equipment palletized. Generally speaking, we recommend palletizing if the equipment is mission critical, high value, or high in volume. For high value shipments, the extra cost of putting your shipment on a pallet is nothing compared to the potential loss in capital expenditure, operating resources, and opportunity cost if an item is lost or damaged on its way to its final destination. Palletizing your equipment keeps your items secure and grouped together.

Also, when your items are on a pallet, package handlers will be forced to use a pallet jack to move your shipment, instead of picking it up and tossing it around. Often IT equipment can look deceptively light, because it’s generally packed thin boxes. But a server, for example, can weigh up to 100+ lbs. IT equipment is not something you want loosely stacked on other pallets nor do you want other shipments to be stacked on top of it

But again, for this post we’re speaking in general terms, when the best method for your IT shipment, will depend on:

• What you’re shipping

• Where you’re shipping from

• Where you’re shipping to

At FGX, we take into account dozens of factors to ensure the solutions we provide are optimized for your specific project. 

Contact us to get shipping options, quotes, and timelines within 24 hours.

How to Ship Used IT Equipment (Custom Crating)

Often our clients want to move their used IT equipment from one location to another – this can be moving servers, CPUs, routers and more from an old office to a new office. 

Moving used equipment requires more care, as you’re tasked with organizing, sorting and packaging IT equipment that’s exposed and out of its original packaging. For many businesses, their teams don’t have the time or resources to properly pack used equipment, which often leads to damaged or lost items.

For shipments like this, we first get photos of the devices and their current state so that we can figure out what’s needed exactly. Then when we dispatch our team, we have them inspect each piece of equipment, create a detailed manifest, and then pack the items securely. Depending on how many devices are being shipped, we’ll sometimes create a custom crate.

Here’s a step-by-step example of custom crating a pallet of IT equipment.

We take the devices and stack them on a pallet with a styrofoam stabilizing foundation. We wrap the servers in an anti-static bubble wrap that protects electronic components and devices from static discharge during transit.

Then we build a crate around the pallet.

This is the end result:

Shipping Used IT Equipment Internationally

The above process becomes more complex when you want to ship already-in-use equipment internationally.

For example, one of our clients was a law firm with offices in over 15 countries. They wanted to ship their existing IT hardware assets (such as conference room equipment, office phones, infrastructure switches) from the US into Brazil, where they were re-opening an office.

This type of shipping involves not just packing and custom crating, but securing the right licenses, filling out the right paperwork, classifying each piece of equipment correctly, paying duties and taxes and more.

For this customer:

• We worked with them to obtain a RADAR license which allows us to compliantly import these assets on their behalf and reduce their import costs.
  
  

• We worked with them closely to guide them through the commercialization setup and requirements so they could properly transfer the assets from their US entity to their Brazilian entity (which they didn’t even know their internal finance team required).
  
  

• Once all of the documentation was finalized and the license was approved, FGX managed the door to door logistics, cleared customs with our dedicated brokerage team, completed the import tax payment on behalf of the importer (and billed it back to their US head office), as well as completed an inside delivery to the specific floor the law firm’s office was on.

If you need to ship IT equipment internationally, please feel free to reach out to us here.

Transportation Methods for  Your IT Equipment: Direct vs. Hub and Spoke Model

One of the most important decisions you have to make when shipping your IT equipment is choosing the right method of transportation.

One option is to use couriers (like DHL and FedEX). This makes sense on the surface, as businesses (and individuals) generally use couriers like this to ship other goods – so, why not their IT equipment? Couriers use the hub and spoke model to cut down on shipping costs to make their services more economical to the end-user (which is typically everyday consumers), but it comes with several drawbacks when shipping IT equipment:

• Lack of expertise: Couriers that use the hub and spoke model move hundreds of thousands of different kinds of goods. They don’t have expertise in any one commodity, let alone IT equipment. Not only will they not pack your equipment for you, even if they did, they wouldn’t understand the intricacies of packing and manifesting IT equipment. All of that is left up to you, as the owner of the goods. A courier is just going to pick up your order and move it through their network, usually bouncing through multiple hubs, until it arrives at its destination. But as we showed above, packing IT equipment isn’t necessarily straightforward.
  
  

• Non-dedicated transportation vehicles: When you ship your IT equipment with traditional couriers, your shipment will be carried along with hundreds of other shipments. This includes everything you can think of, from pallets of food and alcohol, to medical equipment, to sports equipment, and more. When you’re shipping IT equipment, you want to make sure your shipment isn’t going to be stacked on something and more importantly, that nothing will be stacked on it, as this can easily cause damage to the boxes and the devices. These variables are harder to control when you’re not using modes of transportation that are dedicated to just your shipment.
  
  

• Multiple points of contact: With the hub and spoke model, there’s going to be a lot more points of contact with your shipment. Drivers and couriers will move your packages on and off of trucks to different vehicles, store it temporarily in warehouses, and repeat, until delivery.

The more a shipment has to bounce between vehicles, the higher the chances of something being misplaced, lost, or damaged.

For some shipments, the drawbacks of working with couriers are not significant enough to warrant choosing a more direct mode of transportation. When you ship with FGX, we present you with multiple options that are optimized for your specific shipment and note all of the pros and cons, so that you can make the decision that best fits your needs. We take into consideration dozens of factors, like shipment value, volume of what’s being shipped, mission criticalness, and our experience. 

Contact us to get shipping options, quotes, and timelines within 24 hours.

IT Shipping: What to Know When Shipping Internationally

When you’re shipping IT equipment internationally, although you still have to factor in how you’re packing your equipment and what delivery method you're using, the most important problem to solve is navigating the international customs clearance process. 

IT equipment is subject to strict regulations and laws – and preparing your shipment incorrectly can lead to fines, penalties, or shipments that end up getting denied at customs.

To successfully ship your IT equipment into another country, you need to: 

• Confirm that your IT equipment is eligible to ship into your target country. Just because you own certain equipment in the US, that doesn’t mean that same equipment can be sent to India, Brazil, Vietnam, etc.  Some countries have strict laws around brand protection  – which is where the brand (Apple, for example) works with local officials to make sure their goods aren’t being imported without their consent. Other countries (such as India) make it incredibly difficult to import used equipment, to the point where it’s almost always a better business decision to ship only new IT equipment into India. Knowing what you can and can’t ship will save you a lot of time and money.
  
  At FGX, before we convert a shipping option into a booking, we run our Feasibility Checks to ensure that what you’re looking to ship will clear customs. This is counter to what most logistics companies in the industry will do, which is accept your shipment and only let you know at the 11th hour that your devices aren’t eligible for import.
  
  

• Assign a valid Importer of Record (IOR). The Importer of Record is the business entity listed on import documentation of your shipment. Who the IOR is for your shipment is one of the most critical components for clearing customs. Customs officers want to know who is responsible for the imported goods, if they’re eligible to import, their import history, among other criteria. If you have a business entity in your destination country, you may be eligible to act as your own IOR. If you don’t have a business entity, one solution is to choose a shipping solution that leverages Importer of Record services. This can be a good short-term solution, but there are drawbacks to this, such as losing out on your shipment’s reclaimable taxes (both the value-added taxes and goods and services tax).
  
  At FGX, even though we provide IOR services, we will also look at your company’s specific situation to determine whether you can act as the IOR, and if so, have you act as the importer. This enables you to reduce import fees, enable tax reclamation, along with many other benefits.. Even when we have you act as the IOR we’ll still handle all of the documentation, licensing, and customs clearance responsibilities on your behalf, so you get benefits of being an IOR without the overhead.
  
  

• Handle duties & taxes: Your shipment’s bill of materials needs to be classified into HS codes. Each code has applicable duties and taxes based on where you’re looking to ship. But it’s not a simple act of searching online for what HS code corresponds to your equipment. In fact, there’s a lot of ambiguity around which HS code best corresponds to each item.

Yet, getting these codes right is key. The wrong HS classification can cause you to pay too little tax or too much tax on your shipment. Further, you can accidentally classify your product as something which warrants tighter regulation, further delaying your shipment clearing customs. As IT commodity experts, we’re able to identify the optimal HS codes for your bill of materials, which ensures your shipments are compliant but also cost optimized.

For example, let’s say you’re shipping an expensive FPGA to India. One, a general logistics company probably won’t provide you declaration guidance and will ask you to make the declaration. Secondly, even if they did, they would probably choose the first one they think is applicable to the commodity. At FGX, as experts in shipping IT commodities internationally, we know which HS codes are best suited for your shipment to ensure a successful customs clearance and minimize your cost exposure. This can easily be 10 to 15% + in duty savings.

• Provide insurance certificates for your shipment: Depending on the IT equipment you’re shipping you might be required to show customs that you have adequate insurance for what you’re shipping.

• Obtain and complete any and all applicable permits, licenses and documentation.

Plus, you’ll have to be able to  respond to and resolve any inquiries raised by customs: If there are any problems or questions during the customs clearance process, you need to directly communicate with customs and provide them with the information or documentation that they’re requesting. This means understanding the language of international shipping and that specific country’s rules and regulations.

For many businesses, doing all of the above is simply outside of their scope of expertise, which pushes them away from shipping their IT equipment, even though it’s the most cost and operationally efficient method of IT hardware distribution. plan around your shipment arriving at a specific time, and much more.

By leveraging FGX’s global IT shipping service, you can centralize the purchasing of your IT equipment locally (in your origin country) and ship it to your destination countries without the overhead.

FGX is an IT-specific logistics company that takes a holistic approach to your international shipping needs. Unlike general freight forwarders or couriers, we aren’t just order takers - especially because our customers typically don’t know what they don’t know about global IT logistics.

Instead, at FGX we provide our clients with:

• Optimized shipping options: We provide our clients with an optimized shipping solution based on their specific business and shipment. We take into account dozens of factors to optimize your shipping costs, such as  finding ways to reduce your duty exposure, reducing importer of record costs, etc. 

Furthermore, at FGX we provide our clients with detailed quotes broken down by individual line items so you can see exactly what you’re paying for and why.

• Feasibility and compliance checks: We perform our Feasibility and Compliance Checks before we ever accept a shipment or a dollar from you. Other logistics providers can’t and won’t do this, as they lack the expertise that’s needed. Which is why you’ll often run into massive issues like failed customs clearances, when shipping with traditional logistics companies. 

At FGX, we take the ambiguity out of international shipping. With our hands-on approach and experience with customs officials all over the globe, we ensure that everything that can possibly be done to increase the chance of a successful customs clearance is done. This involves verifying import compliance, export compliance, product compliance, and that all relevant permits and licenses have been attained.

• Direct air freight shipments: We don’t risk delays or compromised shipments by using  a hub-and-spoke logistics model. Hub and spoke is a good solution for non-IT, consumer grade goods, but direct air freight is much better for IT equipment.

Similarly, we’ll often use a dedicated last-mile delivery service once the goods have arrived in your target country. This reduces the chance of damaged or lost goods at the last stage of delivery.

• Low-variance timelines: You will receive shipping timelines that are given within days, not months. This helps you better plan your operations around your arriving IT equipment.
  
  

• Dedicated customs clearance: Your shipments will go through a formal customs clearance, as opposed to a bulk or courier clearance. This helps ensure a faster clearance into your destination country.
  
  

• All-risks insurance: It’s uncommon for IT shipment to get meaningful coverage – which we mean coverage that actually reimburses them if something doesn’t clear customs or gets damaged in the delivery process. But our all-risks insurance gives you peace of mind over your IT shipment.

To learn more about the best way to ship servers, CPUs, hard drives, and anything else you need to support your IT infrastructure, contact us at FGX.