Any Producer that builds your exhibit will need to ship your exhibit to the Advance Warehouse or directly to show site once the exhibit is complete. This service represents your Freight cost.
Before your exhibit can ship, it must be loaded out onto the truck with a forklift/pallet jack,
and when it comes back after the show, it must be offloaded and moved to storage. This
represents your Handling/Forklift load out/in services.
Calculating a freight budget is relatively simple, as it mostly has to do with where your booth
is built vs. where your show is taking place. The further away, the more costly the freight.
Below we have a chart outlining some freight/handling cost ranges based on distance from
Producer to show venue. Note that depending on the method in which you ship (dedicated or LTL) accounts for the ranges. A full 52’ high cube trailer going direct will cost significantly more than sending a couple of crates LTL.
Estimates below are per round trip, per truck.
- Under 50 miles – $1,500 -$4,000 (Local show)
- 50 – 500 miles – $2,500 – $6,000 (Same region)
- 500 – 1,000 miles – $3,500 – $8,500 (1/4 of the way across the country)
- 1,000 – 1,500 miles – $4,500 – $10,000 (Halfway across the country)
- 1,500 – 3,000 miles – $5,500 – $14,000 (Across the country)
We want to stress that these are of course ballparks, and many things can affect this cost.
Here are the primary factors that can swing these numbers:
- Gas pricing
- Time to ship (more time = less cost)
- Shipping to Advance Warehouse or Direct to show (Advance Warehouse means less waiting time for truck when delivering)
- Driver waiting time (Especially when taking an exhibit out of a show)
- Amount of freight (Shipping one crate is usually vastly cheaper than an dedicated
trailer full of freight) - Size of freight (Standard trailers for smaller crates and skids are cheaper than highcube
trailers for large exhibit freight)
Although these factors may alter pricing, they won’t alter anything too dramatically.
The best thing you can do to determine your freight budget is to consider the distance your booth will need to travel upon completion, and then factor in a lower or higher budget based on how large your exhibit will be.
