Shipping/brokerage costs to Vancouver

[fishmaster]

Originally Posted by naesco

Jim, with the greatest respect you are wrong.

Seattle LFS or wholesalers face the same issue regarding bringing in less than full truckloads as those in Vancouver.

Therefore, the only difference is freight to Vancouver which is five hundred bucks a truckload.

Wrong....the US vendors likely have way more pre paid shipping deals than a Canadian vendor.
I'm not in the aquarium industry, but in one that is logistically very similar. I work for a distributor who imports many many products from the US and trust me...shipping is not cheap. Often there are pre-paid shipping deals, but you generally need to buy 5-10K plus to meet free freight. So if it's a product line where only a few SKU's sell well, you aften need to buy 6months to a year+ supply to get the freight pre-paid. Now all of the sudden, you are stuck with product you bought at a higher dollar.....Seriously man, it does cost canadian importers more than you think to buy US goods.