Florida Shipping Guide: Packages, Pallets, Freight, Furniture & Luggage

Florida looks like a coastal state and prices like a cornered one. Most of its freight never leaves: 86.4% of Florida tonnage stays inside Florida, travelling 95 miles on average. But the peninsula puts Miami further from the rest of America than almost any major metro, and moving 200 miles up the state to Orlando takes a whole rate band off most of the country. This guide treats Florida the way carriers do — four regional markets plus everything in between, fed by container ports, the busiest international air-cargo gateway in the United States, and a road network that carries 86.8% of the state’s freight with no alternative — and then answers the practical question underneath: what will it cost to ship your package, pallet, furniture or luggage out of Florida, and which method should you use?

1. Executive Summary

Two numbers set up everything that follows. 86.4% of Florida-origin tonnage never leaves Florida, travelling 95 miles on average [1]. Yet the same box that costs $16.09 from Miami to Orlando costs $17.59 to Jacksonville — still inside the state, and in the same rate band Atlanta falls into from Orlando.

1.1 Six findings for a shipper

1. Miami and Orlando are not the same shipping market, and the gap is a whole rate band. From Orlando, Jacksonville is zone 2, Atlanta zone 4 and New York zone 5; from Miami those same three are zone 4, zone 5 and zone 6 [33]. That single fact explains why the distribution centres are on the I-4 corridor and not on Biscayne Bay.
2. Florida moves almost everything by road. Truck carried 86.8% of Florida tonnage in 2022, second only to New York in this six-state series, while water carried 0.02% [1] — not a contradiction of the port story but the point of it: the ports handle international and inbound cargo, which a domestic shipment survey does not count.
3. Freight arrives in Florida and struggles to leave. Florida imported about $115.8 billion of merchandise in 2025 against $78.9 billion of exports [16][18], and the domestic imbalance is starker: Kentucky sends fourteen tons into Florida for every one it takes back, Indiana six, Illinois five [1]. Equipment that arrives loaded has to go home, so outbound capacity from Florida is the cheap direction — the most useful thing on this page for anyone shipping north.
4. Half of what Florida ships is construction material going almost nowhere. Gravel and crushed stone alone were 100.8 million tons, 26% of state tonnage, at an average haul of 30 miles; with non-metallic minerals and natural sands it is 51% of the state’s freight weight [1]. By value the top two are mixed freight and pharmaceuticals — consumer replenishment and the densest cargo in this series at roughly $116,000 a ton.
5. The relocation story has changed, and most published guidance has not caught up. Florida added 196,680 residents in the year to July 2025, second to Texas, but the growth was international: net domestic migration collapsed to 22,517 from 183,646 two years earlier, natural change was negative, and the Miami metro lost an estimated 8,909 people [20][21]. United Van Lines now calls Florida balanced rather than inbound [24].
6. The 2026 trade rules land on Florida harder than on any other state. Section 301 forced-labour duties took effect on July 24, 2026 at 12.5% on Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic and 10% on Mexico, Canada, Guatemala and Honduras [27][28] — most of the trade that gives Florida its gateway role. Separately, the $800 de minimis exemption is gone for every mode, mail included [31][32].

2. Florida Shipping at a Glance

Florida’s seaports report on a fiscal year running October to September, so port figures here are fiscal 2025 and not directly comparable with the calendar-year air, trade and population figures beside them.

3. Why Florida Is a Different Shipping Market

Start with the shape of the state, because it drives the price.

Florida runs about 800 miles from Key West to Pensacola, but the part that matters is where the population sits relative to the rest of the country. Miami is 1,092 miles from New York, 1,191 from Chicago and 2,336 from Los Angeles. There is no direction in which a Miami shipper is close to a large domestic market, and the peninsula means no through traffic either: nobody drives across Florida on the way to somewhere else.

Great-circle distances between city centres. Zone bands are the carriers’ published ones: 2 at 150 miles or less, 3 to 300, 4 to 600, 5 to 1,000, 6 to 1,400, 7 to 1,800, 8 beyond [33]. Your actual zone is assigned by ZIP pair and may differ.

Moving a distribution point 200 miles up the peninsula takes a band off most of the country and two off North Florida — which is why the warehouses cluster between Orlando and Lakeland, and why a Miami business serving national customers pays a structural premium unrelated to its carrier agreement.

3.1 Five things that make Florida different

The freight is heavy, local and mineral. Gravel and crushed stone, non-metallic mineral products and natural sands were 195.5 million tons in 2022, 51% of everything Florida shipped, at average hauls of 30, 274 and 61 miles [1]. The signature Florida freight movement is aggregate going to a building site.

The ports are an import and cruise business, not an export one. Only one Florida port, Tampa, appears in the federal top twenty-five by tonnage, at 18th [11], while PortMiami handled 8.56 million cruise passengers in fiscal 2025 and Port Canaveral 8.6 million passenger movements [5][9]. Conflating cruise traffic, container counts and tonnage produces most of the bad numbers written about Florida shipping.

Miami International is the country’s international air-freight gateway. MIA moved 3,448,913 US tons of cargo in 2025, up 13.6%, ranking first among US airports for international freight [12]. For Latin American perishables it is not one option among several.

Puerto Rico is closer than New York. San Juan is 1,032 miles from Miami against 1,092 to New York — a domestic destination with no customs entry that moves by ocean under the Jones Act, with Jacksonville rather than Miami as the gateway [8][59].

Hurricane season is a shipping fact, not a weather fact. For six months a year carriers respond to named storms by extending transit times and withdrawing the money-back guarantee rather than by refusing freight [36]; section 21 sets out what that means for a delivery date.

4. Florida Freight by the Numbers

The only official survey of what American businesses actually ship is the Commodity Flow Survey, whose most recent benchmark is 2022 [1]. Everything here is measured data from it; section 22 explains why no 2025 equivalent exists.

Source: 2022 Commodity Flow Survey, Florida origin, all commodities [1]. The survey covers mining, manufacturing, wholesale and selected retail and services establishments; it excludes farms, most retail, construction, government and every household shipment, so none of the personal shipping in sections 13 and 15 to 17 appears. “Withheld” means suppressed, not zero — the raw data stores suppressed cells as zero, so analysis that skips the flags understates Florida. Air tonnage is withheld, though the single-mode rows imply it is well under 0.1% of the state total.

Truck’s 86.8% is the second-highest share in this series, just under New York’s 88.5% and far above Texas at 58.7%. Florida has no pipeline network to speak of, negligible domestic water freight and a thin rail share, so road is not one option among several. It is the freight system, and a disruption to it has nowhere to go.

Water is 0.02% of tonnage, which looks absurd for a state with fifteen deep-water ports until you see what the survey measures. The CFS counts domestic shipments by Florida establishments; Florida’s ports are overwhelmingly an international and inbound business, plus cruise. Both facts are true at once, and mixing them is the commonest error in writing about Florida logistics.

Parcel carried 16.1% of shipment value on 0.6% of the weight — $109.8 billion moving in boxes at an average of 815 miles, the long-distance, high-value end of Florida’s freight and a much larger share than Texas’s 9.1%.

4.1 Inside versus outside: the 95-mile state

Source: [1]. The out-of-state row is the all-modes total less the within-Florida row, so it carries no separately published average haul.

What leaves Florida is worth 3.3 times as much per ton as what stays, against 2.8 times in Texas. The heavy, cheap material is aggregate and fuel consumed where it lands; what crosses the state line is pharmaceuticals, electronics and consumer goods.

4.2 How Florida compares with the rest of the series

All figures from the 2022 Commodity Flow Survey, state of origin, all commodities [1]. Shares and value per ton are calculated from the published tonnage and value rows.

Florida and Texas keep almost exactly the same share of their own freight — 86.4% against 87.0% — at almost the same haul, 95 miles against 96. The mechanism is completely different. Texas keeps its freight close because it refines hydrocarbons on the coast and consumes them inland; Florida does because it quarries rock and pours it into buildings a few counties away. The headline number is not the explanation.

5. Florida’s Freight Regions

The Census Bureau divides Florida into four metropolitan survey areas plus a remainder, and that maps closely onto how carriers price the state. The table shows how much Florida-origin freight each received in 2022 — a fair proxy for regional consumption.

Source: [1]. Figures are Florida-origin shipments received by each survey area, all modes, 2022, so they exclude what each area received from outside Florida and sum to within rounding of the within-Florida total in Table 4. The Jacksonville area crosses into Georgia; only the Florida portion is counted. Jacksonville tonnage (CV 26.5) and Tampa value (17.3) are indicative only.

5.1 What the regional split means when you quote a shipment

Average haul is the most useful column. Central Florida receives freight that has travelled 72 miles, the shortest in the state, against South Florida’s 104 and North Florida’s 107. A short inbound haul is the fingerprint of a distribution cluster serving a metro from inside it: goods arrive from a warehouse an hour away, not a factory three states away.

The practical reading: the Orlando–Lakeland belt is where Florida’s freight economy is densest and best served; South Florida carries the volume and the international connections but pays the corner premium; and everything in the “remainder” column — the Panhandle, Southwest Florida, the Keys — runs on thinner lanes with wider quote spreads.

6. South Florida Freight

South Florida is the volume, the international connections and the corner premium at once. The survey area received 86.7 million tons of Florida-origin freight worth $146.6 billion in 2022, more value than any other region [1], while sitting further from the rest of the country than any comparable metro.

6.1 Two container ports, forty miles apart

PortMiami and Port Everglades are close enough to compete and different enough not to. Everglades moved more boxes in fiscal 2025 and is the petroleum gateway for the southern half of the state; Miami is the second-busiest cruise homeport in the world, narrowly behind Port Canaveral.

Port figures are each port’s own fiscal-year reporting, October to September [5][6][7][8][9][10]. Federal ranks are from the BTS Port Performance Freight Statistics 2026 Annual Report, calendar year 2023 [11], whose tonnage table publishes a top 25 only; Port Everglades fell out of it between 2022 and 2023. The columns are not comparable and must not be read as a trend. Port Tampa Bay’s widely quoted “32 million tons” is indistinguishable from the 2023 federal figure of 32,018,524, so treat it as an order of magnitude rather than a measured 2025 total. The +7.4% for Everglades is calculated here.

6.2 Miami International and the perishables trade

MIA handled 3,448,913 US tons of cargo in 2025, up 13.6%, and ranks first among US airports for international freight [12]. It is second nationally on total cargo once mail is included, a distinction most summaries lose. For flowers from Colombia and Ecuador and fish and fruit from across Latin America, MIA is the default rather than an option, and the cold-chain capacity around the airport exists because of it.

Cargo tonnage from each airport’s own reporting [12][14][15]. Landed weight and rank from the FAA’s final CY2025 all-cargo file [13], which measures the certificated weight of arriving freighter aircraft only — not the cargo carried, and not belly cargo on passenger flights. MIA shows the gap starkly: its own cargo tonnage rose 13.6% while its all-cargo landed weight fell 11.3%. The two metrics are not substitutes, and the divergence can come from fuller freighters, a different aircraft mix or more belly cargo; the published data does not separate them. MIA also handled 55,314,661 passengers in 2025, down 1.1% [12].

That passenger number belongs on a freight page because belly capacity on the Latin American network carries a real share of high-value freight out of Miami. The density of forwarders, brokers and bonded facilities around the airport also concentrates international expertise there in a way no other part of the state matches.

7. Central Florida and the I-4 Corridor

If South Florida is where Florida trades, Central Florida is where Florida distributes. The Orlando–Lakeland–Deltona area shipped $184.9 billion of goods in 2022 against Miami’s $176.5 billion — a lead inside the estimate’s own margin of error, so read them as comparable rather than ranked. What is not close is the haul: the freight Central Florida receives has travelled just 72 miles on average, the shortest in the state and the clearest signature of a warehouse cluster [1].

The reason is the one set out in section 3: from Orlando most of the country is a rate band closer than from Miami, and North Florida two bands closer. A distribution centre on I-4 serves the peninsula on short zone-2 and zone-3 lanes and reaches the Southeast and Northeast a band cheaper than a South Florida site can, and Lakeland and Polk County sit at the junction of I-4 and the Turnpike with land South Florida does not have. That is why the fulfilment estate concentrated there rather than beside the ports it feeds from, and why Table 2 is the argument for Central Florida in one line.

8. Tampa Bay and the Gulf Coast

Tampa Bay is the state’s weight. Port Tampa Bay is the only Florida port in the federal top twenty-five by tonnage, 18th at 32.0 million tons in 2023 [11], and it does that on fuel, phosphate and dry bulk rather than containers — roughly 263,000 TEUs, a rounding error against Everglades or JAXPORT.

That specialisation matters more than it sounds. Much of the petroleum on Florida’s roads enters through Tampa and Everglades and is trucked to terminals, which is why gasoline and aviation fuel appear in the commodity table at 18.9 million tons moving an average of 26 miles [1]; phosphate from the Bone Valley deposits moves the other way, to the port. Neither is something an ordinary shipper touches, but both explain why Gulf Coast lanes run heavy with tank and bulk equipment rather than the dry vans a pallet needs.

The Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater area received 35.4 million tons worth $67.4 billion at a 75-mile average haul [1] — a compact regional market well served on short lanes. South of it, the coast from Sarasota through Fort Myers to Naples is among the fastest-growing parts of the state and has no separate measured freight data at all; the survey folds it into “Remainder of Florida”. Anyone quoting a Southwest Florida freight figure is quoting an estimate, and this guide does not produce one.

9. Jacksonville, North Florida and Puerto Rico

Jacksonville is the state’s highway junction and its Puerto Rico gateway. JAXPORT moved 1,388,841 TEUs and 10.2 million tons in fiscal 2025, both up [8], and ranks 10th nationally on loaded containers, the highest federal container ranking of any Florida port [11].

It is also a vehicle port, though the common claim needs correcting. JAXPORT reported 506,237 automobiles in fiscal 2025, down 0.56%, and on calendar-year finished-vehicle counts it is third in the United States, behind Brunswick and Baltimore — not first [8]. Two numbers circulate, roughly 90,000 apart, because the fiscal-year and calendar-year counts measure different things.

9.1 Shipping to Puerto Rico from Florida

San Juan is 1,032 miles from Miami, closer than New York, Chicago or Dallas — and the most misunderstood destination a Florida shipper deals with, because it inverts what people expect on both axes.

In practice the lane runs out of Jacksonville, roughly half the port’s container business, on weekly sailings from Crowley, TOTE and Trailer Bridge with transits of about three days [8]. For a household shipper that makes it more like a domestic LTL movement with a boat in the middle than an export: you book with a carrier, not a forwarder, and there is no entry to file.

The paperwork burden is agricultural and runs northbound. All food and plant material leaving Puerto Rico or the USVI for the mainland must be presented to a USDA inspector before departure, and much is prohibited outright — soil, sugarcane and citrus plants in soil among them — while fresh citrus, avocado, banana, papaya, pineapple, tomato and coffee are permitted [61]. Southbound the restrictions are far lighter, which catches people out in the wrong direction.

10. Major Florida Freight Corridors

Four interstates and one toll road carry almost everything, and because Florida is a peninsula they form a ladder rather than a grid.

One structural fact is worth more than the rest of the table. Florida has no through freight. Every other state in this series carries traffic merely passing between two other places; a peninsula carries almost none. Everything on these roads starts or ends in Florida, which is why the imbalance in section 12 is so pronounced and why closing one road leaves no easy detour.

10.1 What the corridors cost in parcel terms

The table prices a standard box from Miami at 2025 published FedEx Ground rates. Zones are estimated from great-circle distance using the carriers’ standard bands; your actual zone depends on the ZIP pair. “All-in” adds the $5.95 residential surcharge and 20% fuel [33][34].

List rates from FedEx Standard List Rates effective January 6, 2025 [33]. All-in = list + $5.95 residential + 20% fuel; excludes delivery-area, additional-handling and peak surcharges. Zone bands: 2 at 150 miles or less, 3 to 300, 4 to 600, 5 to 1,000, 6 to 1,400, 7 to 1,800, 8 beyond.

Two readings. Inside the state, Pensacola prices from Miami exactly as Savannah does — the Panhandle is not a local delivery from South Florida in any sense a carrier recognises. Outside it, Florida pays the far-corner penalty: Los Angeles is zone 8 from Miami where it is zone 6 from Houston, so the same 70 lb box costs $124.49 all-in from Miami against $93.25 from Texas.

10.2 Plan your shipment

• ExpediShip services — parcels, pallets, luggage, furniture and freight
• Duty and tax calculator for Caribbean, Latin American and other destinations
• Request a quote for a Florida shipment
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11. What Florida Ships

Florida’s outbound freight splits in two: an enormous quantity of rock going a very short distance, and a thin layer of valuable manufactured goods going a long way.

Source: [1], two-digit commodity codes; the top seven among commodities with published figures. “Mixed freight” is consolidated consumer goods for grocery, restaurant and retail replenishment. Five commodities are suppressed and cannot be ranked: live animals, cereal grains, building stone and other non-metallic minerals in both tonnage and value, tobacco products in value. Four codes — coal, crude petroleum, logs in the rough and unknown commodity — have no record at all for Florida.

Aggregate is the state’s freight in one line. Gravel and crushed stone alone is 26% of Florida tonnage at an average haul of 30 miles, and with non-metallic mineral products and natural sands the construction-materials complex is 51% of everything Florida ships. That is a quarry-to-building-site economy, and it is why the all-modes average haul of 519 miles is so much longer than the intrastate 95: two different freight systems are being averaged together.

Pharmaceuticals at $115,839 per ton are the densest freight in this series, nearly twice Texas’s leading figure, on just 775 thousand tons — shipped small, valuable and largely by air and parcel, which is much of why parcel carries 16.1% of state shipment value on 0.6% of the weight.

11.1 International exports

Florida exported $78.9 billion of merchandise in 2025, up 8.9% and a record, ranking sixth among the states [16][17]. Unlike the freight tables above, this is a Latin American story: South and Central America plus the Caribbean took about $34.3 billion, roughly 43% of the total. The top five destinations are Brazil at $6.0 billion, Mexico and Canada at $5.4 billion each, Germany at $5.3 billion and Colombia at $2.7 billion [17] — and four of those five now sit on the other side of a new US import duty, which section 20 sets out.

12. What Comes Into Florida

This is the section that changes how you price a shipment.

Source: [1]. Outbound figures are Florida-origin shipments to the same state, so the ratio is tonnage in against tonnage out. Florida’s own intrastate movement of 331,182 thousand tons dwarfs every interstate flow and is excluded. Pennsylvania is omitted because its outbound tonnage is withheld.

Every row runs in Florida’s direction. No state among Florida’s main trading partners takes more Florida tonnage than it sends, and the extremes are startling: Kentucky ships fourteen tons into Florida for every one it takes back, Indiana six, Illinois five. That is what a consumption economy at the end of a peninsula looks like in freight data.

12.1 Imports

The international picture points the same way. Florida imported about $115.8 billion of merchandise in 2025, down 1.2% against national goods imports up 4.6%, while exporting $78.9 billion [16][18]. That is a goods deficit of roughly $36.9 billion — a calculation from the two Census series rather than a published figure, and the mirror image of Texas, which runs a surplus of similar size. Florida buys from the world and sells to its neighbours.

13. Personal Shipping in Florida

Nothing in the official data counts household shipments: the Commodity Flow Survey excludes them by design, and no carrier publishes parcel volume by state. What follows is national benchmarks applied to Florida indicators.

13.1 Small packages

Americans received 23.1 billion parcels in 2025, up 3.3% — 67 per person, 171 per household, at an average of $9.34 each. Amazon Logistics carried 6.9 billion, USPS 6.2 billion, UPS 4.3 billion and FedEx 3.9 billion [19]; USPS separately reported 6.837 billion shipping and package pieces in fiscal 2025, down 5.7% [22].

Applying those rates to Florida counts gives 8,752,810 households × 171 = 1.50 billion, and 23,462,518 people × 67 = 1.57 billion. Call it 1.5 to 1.6 billion parcels delivered in Florida in 2025, around 4.1 to 4.3 million a day — a Tier 4 estimate assuming Florida households order at the national rate, which a state with this many seasonal residents may not. What is measured is the commercial side: Florida businesses shipped $109.8 billion by parcel, USPS and courier in 2022 [1].

13.2 What personal shipping costs from Florida

Table 10 prices a standard box by destination. As a curve, the same rates expose two features a table hides.

The first is the step at 100 lb, where a zone 2 package jumps from $32.75 at 70 lb to $70.39 — the tier where pricing it as freight starts to pay. The second is how the bands fan out with weight: at 10 lb a New York box costs 33% more than a Fort Myers one, at 70 lb 119% more. For light parcels Florida’s position barely registers; for heavy ones it dominates.

13.3 Residential delivery, surcharges and access

On 2025 published rates FedEx charged a $5.95 residential surcharge per package on Ground and Home Delivery, $6.55 on international express, $27 to $38 for additional handling internationally and $240 to $305 for oversize domestically [33][34].

Delivery-area surcharges attach to rural ZIP codes, and Florida has fewer of them than the western states in this series. What it has instead is access complexity: gated communities with delivery windows, barrier islands reached by one causeway, condominium towers with service elevators booked by the hour, and the Keys, where US-1 is the only road. None shows up as a rural surcharge; all show up as a failed delivery or a shuttle charge. Section 15.3 sets out how that prices on a freight shipment.

13.4 Moving to and from Florida

Florida added 196,680 residents in the year to July 2025, the second-largest numeric gain of any state after Texas [20]. The composition is where the story has changed, and most published guidance has not caught up.

Source: Census Bureau Vintage 2025 [20]. The components sum to 199,858 against a published total of 196,680; the difference is the Census residual, reproduced here rather than reconciled away.

Two things qualify it. The Miami metro lost an estimated 8,909 residents while Orlando gained 37,690, Jacksonville 26,153 and Tampa 13,538 [21] — Florida’s growth is now a Central and North Florida phenomenon. And the mover indices disagree: U-Haul ranked Florida second for 2025 on net one-way flow within its own network, while United Van Lines placed it on neither top ten and called the state balanced [23][24]. Both measure a share of one company’s traffic, not volume.

How Florida regulates movers

Intrastate household-goods movers answer to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services under Chapter 507, Florida Statutes, with rules in Florida Administrative Code Chapter 5J-15 reissued effective July 14, 2025 [38][39]. Putting movers under the agriculture department is unusual, and it means the consumer protections sit in consumer-services law rather than transport law, which changes what they are.

• Registration is required, and brokers are now covered too. The fee is $300 a year [38], verifiable through the FDACS business search under programme type IM for movers or MB for brokers [40]. Since July 1, 2024, brokers must register and are barred from preparing estimates or contracts [41] — aimed at the broker-quotes-low, carrier-charges-high pattern.
• There is no percentage cap on the final charge. Chapter 507 contains no equivalent of the federal 110% rule. Florida’s protection is structural rather than numerical.
• 60 cents per pound is a floor that cannot be waived. Section 507.04(5) provides that a mover “may not limit its liability for the loss or damage of household goods to a valuation rate that is less than 60 cents per pound per article”, and waiver clauses are void [38]. Worth stating plainly, because Texas sets no floor at all — its 2025 consumer rules leave mover liability to agreement, “if any”. Florida does not.
• Withholding goods after payment is a felony. Once the customer pays the amount set out in the estimate or contract, the mover must release the shipment; refusing, where a law enforcement officer determines proper payment was made, is a third-degree felony [38] — a criminal rather than civil answer to the hostage-load problem.
• There is no statutory mediation or arbitration route, the inverse of the federal position, where arbitration is binding at the shipper’s request for claims up to $10,000. In Florida a dispute is a complaint to FDACS or a civil matter.

Moving out of Florida is federal, under 49 CFR Part 375 [42]: Full Value Protection is the default and must be waived in writing, a non-binding estimate caps payment at 110% at delivery, and arbitration must be offered.

13.5 Seasonal residents, and when to ship

Florida’s population swells in winter and thins in summer, moving household goods, vehicles and luggage on a schedule no other state in this series has. It is also almost entirely unmeasured: the only documented statewide estimate uses 1996 data, and every figure in circulation today traces to tourism promotion or media estimates with no stated method, so this guide gives no seasonal population number. What can be said is operational. Southbound auto transport and household moves concentrate in October to December and northbound in April to May; on those lanes in those months capacity tightens and quotes rise. Book earlier than you think you need to.

13.6 Shipping a vehicle from Florida

Auto transport is a separate industry with its own licensing. Interstate carriers need FMCSA operating authority and brokers a $75,000 surety bond [43]. Cargo insurance is not federally required for general freight, so coverage on an auto hauler is contractual, typically $100,000 to $250,000 per vehicle — ask to see the certificate.

Tier 4, industry estimates rather than official data. A consumer survey of nearly 800 quotes from more than thirteen carriers, collected October 2025 [44]. No credible source publishes car shipping prices specific to Florida, so none are invented here. Estimate from road miles, which run roughly 10 to 20% above the straight-line distances in Table 10 — Miami to New York is about 1,280 by road against 1,092 straight-line — at two to three days per 500 miles.

Two flows compound in Florida: relocation moves cars one way, and the seasonal cycle moves them both ways every year — a large fleet running north in spring and south in autumn on predictable dates, exactly the pattern that produces capacity crunches if you book late. On belongings inside the car there is no federal entitlement to ship them; the common allowance of about 100 lb in the trunk below the window line is carrier policy driven by the truck’s 80,000 lb weight limit, and those items travel at owner’s risk outside the cargo policy [45].

14. Commercial Shipping in Florida

Commercial shipping in Florida falls into four patterns that price on different logic: inventory replenishment on recurring lanes, which should never touch a published rate; construction and aggregate freight, a bulk business with its own equipment; high-value small freight — pharmaceuticals, electronics, medical devices — where declared value and chain of custody matter more than rate; and international movements, where the broker decides.

14.1 Documentation

A commercial international shipment needs an invoice on company letterhead with a tax ID, a packing list, the correct incoterm, HS classification per line, a certificate of origin where a trade agreement is claimed, export control screening and an AES filing above $2,500 per Schedule B line.

14.2 The Florida tax position

Florida has no personal income tax, prohibited by Article VII, section 5 of the state constitution [55]. It does have a corporate income tax at 5.5%, with a $50,000 exemption [52] — which makes it a conventional income-tax state, unlike Texas’s tax on margin or Washington’s tax on gross receipts.

That distinction matters in a loss-making year. Florida taxes profit, so a business with no net income generally owes nothing; Texas taxes margin and Washington gross receipts, and both can produce a bill in a year with no profit at all. Florida’s $50,000 exemption [52] is small next to the Texas revenue threshold, so the tax starts earlier and stays lighter per dollar.

Sales tax is 6.0% at state level plus a county surtax: 7.0% in Miami-Dade and Broward, 6.5% in Orange, 7.5% in Hillsborough and Duval [53]. Two quirks matter. The surtax applies only to the first $5,000 of a single item — per item, not per invoice. And delivery charges are a trap: separately stated freight is exempt only if the customer could have avoided it by collecting the goods; where delivery is mandatory the charge is taxable even when stated separately [54]. For anyone leasing warehouse space, Florida repealed its commercial rent sales tax on October 1, 2025 [63].

15. Florida Pallet and LTL Shipping

A pallet is the unit of freight, and getting it right decides the class, the price and whether the shipment arrives intact.

15.1 Dimensions, weight and class

The standard North American pallet is 48 × 40 inches, which LTL tariffs and trailer layouts assume; a 53-foot trailer holds 26 floor-loaded or 52 double-stacked. Keep the loaded height at or under 48 inches including the pallet, and let nothing overhang the edge — overhang causes more damage claims and reclassifications than any other packing error.

Freight class is mostly density. Multiply length by width by height in inches, divide by 1,728 for cubic feet, then divide weight by cubic feet. A 48 × 40 × 48 inch pallet is 53.3 cubic feet; at 800 lb that is 15 lb per cubic foot, around class 70; at 300 lb it is 5.6, around class 175. Two extra inches of height can cost a band.

FedEx Freight zone-based rates effective January 6, 2025, Priority service [35]. Zones 101 to 150 are assigned per ZIP pair; the columns are the tariff’s shortest, middle and longest zones, not specific Florida lanes. These are published list rates; contract LTL is routinely discounted by a large fraction of tariff. Moving from class 70 to class 100 adds 29% at 500 lb on a short lane and 43% on a long one, so getting the class right repays the few minutes it takes.

15.2 The Florida size and weight rules that catch people out

Florida Statutes sections 316.515, 316.535 and 316.545, and FDOT published limits [56]. Permits come from the FDOT Permits Office; weight enforcement is by the Florida Highway Patrol, and published Florida weight tables include a 10% scale tolerance. After a major storm FDOT issues short-dated blanket emergency permits lifting divisible-load weight and dimension limits for a few weeks; those are exceptions, not standing rules [57].

Two things surprise people. The 57-foot allowance is longer than the 53 feet most assume is the national ceiling, so equipment legal in Florida may not be legal at an out-of-state destination. And the 40,000 lb axle-group allowance off the Interstate beats the federal tandem limit, which is why local aggregate haulers run configurations that would be overweight a state away.

15.3 Accessorials, and where they bite in Florida

LTL was built for businesses with loading docks. When either end is a residence a stack of charges applies that can double a short-haul quote: residential pickup or delivery at each end; liftgate, since a trailer floor sits four feet off the ground and must be requested at booking; limited access; appointment scheduling; and inside delivery, because standard LTL stops at the curb. Florida’s version is concentrated rather than rural — gated and age-restricted communities, high-rise condominiums with booked service elevators, barrier islands and the Keys are all routinely classified limited access, and they sit in the most densely populated parts of the state. A delivery in Naples or Key Largo can attract more accessorials than one in rural Georgia.

15.4 Securing a pallet

Square, even stack, heaviest on the bottom. Full-perimeter stretch wrap of at least five turns, carrying the bottom two courses into the pallet deck. Two banding straps above roughly 500 lb, corner boards on anything crushable, and the address on two sides, because labels get torn off in terminals. Anything crossing internationally needs stamped ISPM-15 pallets.

15.5 How much does it cost to ship a pallet from Florida?

On the 2025 tariff above, a 500 lb class-70 pallet prices at $572 on a short zone, $1,249 on a mid zone and $3,169 on the longest, with minimums of $530, $939 and $2,120 [35]. Miami to Orlando sits at the short end and Miami to the West Coast at the long end; contract rates run at a fraction of these figures, and on northbound lanes a smaller fraction still.

A rough rule for one pallet out of Florida: under 150 lb, price it as parcel too. Between 150 and 1,000 lb inside the peninsula, LTL is almost certainly right. Going north, take several quotes — that is where the carrier spread is widest and most in your favour. Above six to eight pallets, price a truckload. And settle the access questions before the quote, not after.

16. Florida Furniture Shipping

Furniture is the hardest ordinary shipment to price: too large for parcel, too small for a moving company, awkward for LTL. Florida adds a large second-home market that furnishes remotely, and delivery addresses harder to reach than their postcode suggests.

16.1 What the rules do to furniture

Parcel carriers bill the greater of actual and dimensional weight, dimensional being length by width by height divided by 139, rounded up [33][34]. For furniture, dimensional weight nearly always wins.

DIM and girth calculated from the stated box sizes using the carriers’ published formula, taking the longest dimension as the length [33][34]. Parcel limits: 150 lb, 108 in length, 165 in L+girth; oversize above 96 in length or 130 in L+girth.

16.2 The selection model

16.3 The Florida question to settle first

Not the distance, which is usually modest inside the peninsula, but what stands between the trailer and the room: a guardhouse with a delivery window, a service elevator that must be booked and padded, a causeway with a weight restriction, a barrier-island driveway a 53-foot trailer cannot turn in. Each converts a standard LTL delivery into an appointment, a shuttle or a failed attempt. Ask the building or community management before you book.

The second question is which network serves the address. Inside the I-4 and I-95 corridors a blanket-wrap specialist is often competitive with LTL once crating, liftgate and damage risk are counted; in the Panhandle, the Keys and the inland counties the specialists run thinner networks, and palletised LTL with a liftgate is more reliable.

17. Florida Luggage Shipping

Florida combines three populations that travel with more than they can carry: seasonal residents, cruise passengers and a large international student body.

17.1 Who ships luggage from Florida

Florida hosted 46,720 international students in 2024/25, seventh among the states and up 4.4%, contributing an estimated $1.49 billion [51] — the University of South Florida leading with 7,268, then Florida at 6,703 and Florida International at 4,808. India and China supply the largest shares, but Brazil at 6.2% and Colombia at 4.1% give Florida a Latin American student profile no other state has. Add 178,674 net international migrants in the year to July 2025 [20] and the cruise ports on top — 8.56 million passengers at PortMiami, 8.6 million movements at Canaveral [5][9].

17.2 Ship it or check it?

Airline fees as published by each carrier and verified September 2026 [46][47][48][49][50]. American’s apply to tickets issued on or after April 9, 2026; Southwest ended free bags on May 28, 2025 and repriced on April 9, 2026. JetBlue, Spirit and Frontier price bags dynamically, so their first and second bag fees vary by route and are not quoted; Spirit’s allowance rose from 40 lb to 50 lb on June 4, 2024. Shipping rates are 2025 FedEx Ground list rates from Miami, all-in adding the $5.95 residential surcharge and 20% fuel [33].

The overweight thresholds are what to take away. Frontier treats a bag as overweight at 41 lb, not 51, so a 45 lb suitcase rides free of surcharge on American, Southwest, JetBlue and Spirit but not on Frontier. Much published guidance still pairs Spirit with Frontier here; Spirit raised its allowance to 50 lb in June 2024. And JetBlue’s $150 charge at 51–70 lb exceeds the cost of shipping that bag anywhere in Florida.

On the ordinary comparison: shipping beats a second checked bag on Florida lanes and roughly matches a first as far as Jacksonville; to the Northeast or West Coast, checking is cheaper and shipping wins only against a third bag or an overweight charge. Pieces over 70 lb are heavy packages and over 150 lb are freight, and liability on an unboxed suitcase is limited, so box it.

18. Florida Shipping Costs

There is no single answer to what shipping costs. What can be stated is what drives it.

Parcel from FedEx 2025 published tariffs, all-in adding the $5.95 residential surcharge and 20% fuel; LTL from the FedEx Freight tariff’s shortest, middle and longest zones, which are assigned per ZIP pair and are not Florida geography [33][34][35]. Car shipping is in section 13.6, international rates in the companion cost study [62].

19. Published Rates versus Market Rates

Every price here is an undiscounted published list rate. Carriers keep a tariff because it anchors negotiation, and almost no business pays it: discounts follow volume, lane density and commitment. The result is a market with two prices:

• Published rate. What an occasional or household shipper is quoted at the counter or on a public rate tool — Tables 10, 16, 19 and 20 here.
• Market rate. What a carrier will actually accept for a shipment on a given day, given its capacity on that lane. Invisible from outside, varying by carrier, week and direction.

19.1 Where the gap is widest in Florida

The spread is narrowest where published pricing is already competitive and the shipment simple. It widens where three conditions combine: LTL rather than parcel, a long lane, and an imbalanced direction where a carrier with empty capacity prices to fill it. Florida is the strongest case of that third condition in this series. Section 12 showed every major trading partner sending more tonnage into Florida than it takes back — Kentucky at fourteen to one, Indiana at six. A peninsula generates no through traffic, so a carrier that comes down loaded either finds Florida-origin freight or runs empty. A northbound quote out of Florida therefore deserves more shopping around than almost any other movement in this guide. The reverse holds too: shipping into Florida, you are the load the carrier was always going to get.

20. International Shipping from Florida

Florida is a gateway state, and 2026 rewrote the rules that govern the gateway. Two federal actions matter more than anything a destination does.

20.1 The tariff position, as it actually stands

The 2025 emergency tariffs are gone. On February 20, 2026 the Supreme Court held in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that the statute relied on did not authorise them, and all duties imposed under it terminated on February 24, 2026 [25][26]; refunds were remanded to the Court of International Trade rather than settled by the Court. A Section 122 balance-of-payments surcharge ran in their place until its 150-day statutory limit expired on July 24, 2026, and the same court held it unlawful in May 2026 — a live refund question for anyone who paid it. What replaced it is narrower in method and wider in reach: a Section 301 forced-labour action took effect at 12:01am on July 24, 2026, covering sixty economies at 10% or 12.5% [27][28] — which for Florida lands on most of the trade that gives the state its gateway role.

Source: CBP guidance CSMS #69326983 and the USTR notice of action [27][28]; the table lists the economies relevant to Florida, not all sixty, and the guidance is the authority for any particular country. Duties apply through HTSUS headings 9903.05.20 to 9903.05.84, with exemptions at 9903.05.85 to 9903.05.92. This is an import measure: it reaches a Florida business bringing goods in, and has no application to a Florida exporter shipping out.

20.2 The end of de minimis

The United States indefinitely suspended the $800 de minimis exemption for every mode, mail included, from June 24, 2026, under two companion rules; the replacement postal informal entry process, for mail shipments of $2,500 or less, began operating a month later on July 24 [31][32]. Bona fide gifts of $100 or less and personal articles up to $200 accompanying a traveller survive; nothing else does.

For a Florida importer that removes any low-value threshold on air freight from Latin America and ocean freight from the Caribbean: every commercial entry now needs a classification, a value and usually a bond. Small e-commerce importers who built a model on $800 parcels no longer have one.

20.3 Documentation

Section 14.1 lists the commercial paperwork. For a personal shipment the declared value must match the invoice, since it sets duty and carrier liability both; a change of residence needs an inventory, passport or visa copy and proof of the move; and wooden pallets need an ISPM-15 stamp. Country detail is in the companion cost study [62].

21. Hurricane Season and Service Reliability

No other state in this series carries this exposure across so much of its freight network. The Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30 and peaks around September 10 [58] — half the year, every year, over a state that moves 86.8% of its freight by truck with no alternative network to divert onto. What carriers actually do is narrower than people expect, and more important.

There is a larger point behind that, and it is current rather than seasonal. FedEx’s money-back guarantee now covers only a short list of express services, reinstated on January 13, 2026 for domestic and February 12, 2026 for international, and remains suspended for everything else — FedEx Ground and Home Delivery included, which is everything Table 10 prices. UPS’s is likewise limited to a few premium services, with a separate suspension on all US inbound imports since October 2, 2025 [36][37]. For most Florida shipments the guarantee is not something a storm takes away; it was already gone.

So between August and October, add days rather than rely on a commitment. A storm’s freight effect also outlasts its weather effect: FDOT’s post-storm emergency permits, which lift weight and dimension limits so recovery material can move, run about two weeks — a fair proxy for how long the network stays abnormal [57]. And shipping into Florida after a landfall, expect capacity to go to building materials and utility equipment first.

22. Methodology, Data Sources and Limitations

Every figure carries a tier. Tier 1, measured is an official count of something that happened — port volumes, air cargo, trade values, population, carrier tariffs. Tier 1, survey is an official sample survey of real shipments: the 2022 CFS. Tier 2, modelled is an official document built on a vendor model. Tier 4, estimate is derived or commercial: Florida parcel volume and auto transport costs.

22.1 Why the freight-flow data is not from 2025

Most of this guide genuinely is 2025: port volumes, air cargo, trade, population, carrier tariffs, airline fees and the regulatory position. Freight flows are the exception. The Commodity Flow Survey runs every five years and its latest benchmark is 2022; FDOT’s Freight Mobility and Trade Plan is built on modelled data rather than measurement [4]. Anyone quoting a “2025 Florida freight tonnage” is quoting a projection.

22.2 How the estimates were built, and what they cannot tell you

Parcel zones are estimated from great-circle distance between city centres using the carriers’ published bands, where real zones go by ZIP pair; all-in prices are the list rate plus the $5.95 residential surcharge, times 1.20 for fuel. Florida parcel volume applies national 2025 rates to Census counts, auto transport costs come from a commercial quote survey, and the goods deficit in section 12 is calculated from two Census series rather than published. The gaps:

• Household shipments are not counted anywhere. Every figure in sections 13 and 15 to 17 on personal shipping volume is a national benchmark or derived estimate. Florida also has no seasonal-population measurement — the only statewide estimate uses 1996 data — so this guide treats the seasonality as a timing fact, not a quantity.
• Southwest Florida has no separate freight data. Sarasota, Fort Myers and Naples fall inside “Remainder of Florida”, so no measured regional figure exists for one of the state’s fastest-growing areas.
• Several Florida commodities are suppressed in the 2022 survey, and suppressed cells store as zero in the raw data, so rankings built without checking the flags understate Florida. Several regional estimates carry coefficients of variation above 25, marked indicative where quoted.
• Port figures are fiscal-year and not comparable with each other or with the calendar-year figures beside them; the federal ranking covers 2023 and no statewide 2025 port tonnage exists. Air cargo units differ between airports, and FAA landed weight measures aircraft rather than cargo.
• Published rates are not market rates, and no marketplace transaction data is used; treat every price here as a ceiling.
• Rules change. Tariffs, customs thresholds, carrier guarantees, airline fees and mover rules all moved in 2025 and 2026.

23. Florida Shipping Profile 2025

Tiles with a bracketed source are measured or official; the rest are derived as described in section 22. No marketplace transaction data was used.

24. How ExpediShip Can Help

Section 19 makes the central point of this guide: every price in it is a published list rate, and published tariffs are what an occasional shipper is quoted. They are the ceiling, not the market. Carriers discount heavily for volume, and a household or small business shipping one pallet, a few boxes or a suitcase out of Florida has no volume of its own to negotiate with.

ExpediShip solves that by aggregating. We book through UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS and freight carriers at bulk-negotiated rates and pass the discount to shipments that would otherwise pay list — which is why the saving is largest on what this guide covers: heavy boxes, single pallets, furniture, luggage and international parcels leaving Florida for more than 200 countries.

What we ship from Florida

Before you request a quote

Have the seven items listed in the FAQ ready — ZIP codes at both ends, weight, dimensions of the packed piece, piece count and whether it is palletized, residential or dock at each end, commodity and value, and your timeframe. For a Florida address, say whether it is behind a gate, on a barrier island or subject to a delivery window. For shipments to the Caribbean, Latin America or further afield, our duty and tax calculator estimates what the recipient will be charged on arrival.

25. Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. US Census / BTS, 2022 Commodity Flow Survey, Florida. data · programme
2. US Census Bureau, QuickFacts: Florida; ACS 2020–2024. link
3. Bureau of Economic Analysis, GDP by state, 2025. link
4. FDOT, Freight Mobility and Trade Plan. link
5. PortMiami, FY2025 cargo and cruise results. link
6. Port Everglades, FY2025 results. link
7. Port Tampa Bay, cargo statistics. link
8. JAXPORT, FY2025 results and State of the Port 2026. link
9. Port Canaveral, FY2025 results. link
10. SeaPort Manatee and Port Panama City, FY2025 tonnage. link
11. BTS, Port Performance Freight Statistics: 2026 Annual Report (USACE CY2023, top 25). PDF
12. Miami-Dade Aviation Department, 2025 statistics. link
13. FAA, final calendar year 2025 all-cargo airports by landed weight. PDF
14. Broward County Aviation, Fort Lauderdale 2025 cargo. link
15. Hillsborough County Aviation, Tampa 2025 cargo. link
16. US Census Bureau, state exports by origin of movement, December 2025. link
17. USTR, Florida trade profile, 2025. link
18. US Census Bureau, general imports by state of destination, December 2025. link
19. Pitney Bowes, Parcel Shipping Index 2026 (CY2025). link
20. US Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 state population estimates and components. link
21. US Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 metropolitan and city population estimates. link
22. USPS, fiscal year 2025 results, November 2025. link
23. U-Haul Growth Index 2025. link
24. United Van Lines, 2025 National Movers Study. link
25. Supreme Court, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, No. 24-1287, Feb 2026. PDF
26. Executive Order 14389, Ending Certain Tariff Actions, February 2026. link
27. CBP, CSMS #69326983, Section 301 forced labor import duties, July 23, 2026. link
28. USTR, notice of action, Section 301 forced labor, 91 FR 47318, July 2026. link
29. USTR, notice of action: Brazil, 91 FR 45516, July 2026. PDF
30. CBP, CSMS #69302472, Section 301 duties on products of Brazil. link
31. CBP, de minimis suspension, all modes other than postal, 91 FR 37789, effective June 24, 2026. link
32. CBP, de minimis suspension for mail and postal informal entry, 91 FR 37801, effective July 24, 2026. link
33. FedEx, Standard List Rates, effective January 6, 2025. PDF
34. FedEx, Service Guide, January 6, 2025. PDF
35. FedEx Freight, Zone-Based Rates, contiguous US, effective January 6, 2025. PDF
36. FedEx, service alerts and money-back guarantee status. link
37. UPS, service guarantee status. link
38. Florida Statutes, Chapter 507 (household moving services). link
39. Florida Administrative Code Chapter 5J-15, effective July 14, 2025. link
40. FDACS business and licensee search (types IM and MB). link
41. Laws of Florida ch. 2024-47 (SB 304), moving brokers, July 1, 2024. link
42. FMCSA, 49 CFR Part 375, interstate household goods moves. link
43. FMCSA, operating authority and broker bond requirements. link
44. Move.org, car shipping cost survey, quotes collected October 2025. link
45. AmeriFreight, personal belongings in a shipped vehicle. link
46. American Airlines, checked baggage policy. link
47. Southwest Airlines, travel fees and baggage. link
48. JetBlue, checked bag fees. link
49. Spirit Airlines, bag options and fees. link
50. Frontier Airlines, bag options and fees. link
51. IIE Open Doors 2025, Florida. link
52. Florida Statutes ss. 220.11 and 220.14 (corporate income tax). link
53. Florida Department of Revenue, sales tax and discretionary surtax rates. link
54. Florida Administrative Code Rule 12A-1.045, transportation charges. link
55. Constitution of the State of Florida, Article VII, section 5. link
56. Florida Statutes ss. 316.515, 316.535, 316.545 (size and weight). link
57. FDOT, oversize, overweight and emergency permits. link
58. NOAA National Hurricane Center, tropical cyclone climatology. link
59. 46 USC 55102 and 55101 (the Jones Act and coastwise laws). link
60. 19 CFR Part 7, customs territory and insular possessions. link
61. USDA APHIS, agricultural products from Puerto Rico and the USVI. link
62. ExpediShip Research, 2025 International Shipping Cost Study — customs and VAT citations by country. Available on request.
63. Laws of Florida ch. 2025-208 (HB 7031), commercial rent tax repeal, October 1, 2025. link