What moves price
How freight changes the delivered onion price
The delivered price of onions is the FOB price plus the truck freight from the origin to the buyer's dock, so the same onions land at different costs in different cities. Because freight moves with fuel, distance and truck availability, a buyer can pay one FOB and see the delivered number swing on the lane alone, and sometimes switch origins on freight rather than on the onion price.
Updated Jul 10, 2026
Cite
The delivered price of onions is simply the FOB price plus the freight to get them there. FOB is the onions on the truck at the origin. Freight is the trucking. Add them and you have what the onions actually cost landed at the buyer's dock. The onion price and the freight are two separate markets, and the delivered number is where they meet.
Same onions, different cities
Because freight depends on the lane, the same FOB lands at different delivered costs in different places. A 50-lb sack of Idaho-Eastern Oregon jumbos priced FOB at the Treasure Valley shed costs one thing delivered into Salt Lake and more delivered into Atlanta, because Atlanta is the far longer haul. The onions did not change. The distance did. A buyer comparing offers has to think in delivered terms for their own city, not in the raw FOB, because two buyers starting from the identical FOB will not land the onions at the same cost.
Freight is its own moving market
Truck rates are not a fixed add-on. They move with fuel prices, with how many trucks are chasing loads that week and with the season. Produce freight tightens when everything is harvesting at once and every shipper wants trucks, and it loosens when freight demand falls off. So the delivered price can move even when the FOB is flat, purely because the truck leg repriced. When a buyer says onions got more expensive and the shed price never budged, freight is usually the reason.
When buyers switch origins on freight
Freight can decide the origin. If two regions are quoting similar FOB onions but one is a much shorter haul to the buyer's dock, the closer origin wins on delivered cost even at an equal or slightly higher FOB. That is why a Southeast buyer often leans on Georgia or Peru through East Coast ports while a Western buyer leans on the Northwest, and why a freight swing can flip that math. The onion price gets the attention, but the freight lane quietly decides plenty of deals.
Worked example: one FOB, freight added
Take the FOB range on the Idaho-Eastern Oregon table above. That is the starting number, before a mile of freight. To reach a delivered price, a buyer adds the truck rate for their lane, more for a long haul, less for a short one. The FOB is the fixed point. The freight is the variable that turns one origin price into a different landed cost for every buyer.
Know Your Onions reports FOB shipping-point prices as USDA publishes them. This site does not track truck lanes, so any freight figures in examples are illustrative and clearly labeled as such.
Try it
The FOB input is the declared export value per tonne for onions shipped from the Netherlands to West Africa (Eurostat Comext, CN 07031019), shown on the export price page. EU trade statistics record exports free on board at the exporting country's border, so it is an FOB figure, but it is a monthly average across all shipments published two to three months late, not a quote. The freight default is CMA CGM's published reefer rate of €1,600 per 40 ft container from Antwerp or Rotterdam to Dakar, effective October 1, 2023 (AJOT); FreshPlaza reported in March 2022 that a container of onions from the Netherlands to Senegal had cost about €2,100 in 2020 and €3,500 in the most recent season (FreshPlaza). Rates move with fuel and vessel space, so put in a current quote. 28 tonnes is the volume ceiling for bagged onions in a 40 ft high-cube reefer (container loading guide). Under the Incoterms CIF rule the seller insures the cargo for at least 110% of the contract price (ICC Academy), so the premium is your rate times 110% of CIF; the 0.3% default is a placeholder for your insurer's rate. Port charges at Dakar sit outside a CIF price and are added separately. A bag is 25 kg, 40 to the tonne. This is arithmetic on the figures you enter, indicative only, not a quote or an offer.