Relative Transport Costs in the USA

Hi All,

I come from Australia, and although we have countries which are roughly the same size there are significant differences when it comes to freight. The biggest I think is the amount of congestion you guys have to put up with, whereas we have a much lower population density.

My question is this - I am looking to export goods to the USA, store them in a warehouse and freight them out. The goods will be in small boxes about the size of a microwave. Now in Australia I would set up my warehouse in Brisbane (northern Australia). The reason for this is most industry is in the south of Australia, and therefore trucks generally go north completely full and head south with only a half load. As a consequence, the cost of shipping freight north is about 50% more than the cost of shipping freight south.

Does a similar situation exist in the States? For example I would guess that a lot of freight would go to Florida, but as Florida is a tourism based state, I assume there would not be a lot of freight leaving Florida. Consequently I would assume that I can get better freight rates from Florida then I could from say Los Angeles CA.

What are your thoughts? Ignoring all other costs and only considering the cost of freight, where would you set up your warehouse? Cheers.

 

Thanks Tiger - I am also thinking of looking at Las Vegas as a distribution point. My guess is that outbound freight and warehousing would be cheaper from Las Vegas than Los Angeles and the only additional cost would be the overland from the Port to LV.