Ask anyone here what something will cost landed and you will get the same answer. Take the US price and multiply by three.
Nobody can tell you where the number came from. Nobody can break it down. And yet everyone uses it, including people who import for a living. That is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing — a rule of thumb that survives that long is usually absorbing something real.
Short answer, up front. The rule of three is a bulky-goods rule. For a pallet it is roughly right. For anything flat and light it overshoots badly, and applying it will talk you out of purchases that were fine. The useful skill is knowing which side of the line a thing sits on.
What the three is actually absorbing
It is not one charge. It is a stack, and each layer is invisible at the point you click buy.
There is freight, which is the obvious one. Then handling at the US end, and handling again at this end. Then duty, set by category. Then local tax. Then the forwarder or consolidator’s margin, which is how they stay in business. Then delivery from the warehouse to your door.
Six or seven separate charges, arriving at different moments, some quoted upfront and some not. The rule of three exists because working through that stack in advance is genuinely hard, and people would rather have one bad number than seven unknown ones.
The thing almost nobody knows: you pay for space, not weight
This single fact explains most of the confusion.
Carriers charge on whichever is greater: the actual weight, or the dimensional weight — a figure calculated from the size of the box. A large, light package is billed as though it were heavy, because it takes up space on the plane that nothing else can use.
Which is why a set of stainless fixings that weighs two kilos can cost less to bring in than a plastic planter that weighs one. The planter is mostly air, and you pay for the air.
Once you know this, a lot of outdoor buying decisions resolve themselves. Cushions, sail fabric, anything inflatable or moulded — expensive to ship, cheap to buy. Hardware, tools, fittings, small metal parts — the opposite.
Where the rule of three is a lie
Some retailers now calculate import charges at checkout and collect them upfront. When that happens the whole picture changes: you see the landed price before you commit, there is no bill waiting at pickup, and the multiplier for small flat items lands nowhere near three.
This is quietly one of the better developments for anyone building outdoors here. It does not apply to everything and it does not apply on every island, but where it does, it removes the guessing entirely. Check at checkout — if a line appears for import charges or duties, that is the number, and you can stop estimating.
The trade is time rather than money. Direct shipping to the islands runs on long timetables, and the estimated window is often two weeks wide. Order accordingly. Nothing about this route is fast.
Where the rule of three is roughly right
Furniture. Planters. Pavers. Anything that needs a pallet or a crate.
Here you are into freight consolidation rather than parcels — the weekly Miami runs that most things on this island arrive on. It works, it is well established, and the people doing it have been doing it for decades. But the cost stack is deeper, the paperwork is real, and the multiplier climbs.
At that point the honest question is not how to import it more cheaply. It is whether to import it at all. A locally sourced piece at a higher sticker price is frequently the better buy once the stack is counted — and it arrives this month rather than next quarter.
The customs part nobody explains properly
Start with the thing most people get wrong. Aruba does have a personal exemption — an invoice value of 900 florin, below which you pay nothing — but it applies to goods you carry in yourself. Customs is explicit that the items must be in the traveller’s possession on arrival. It is a luggage allowance, not a parcel allowance.
A shipped package is not luggage. It arrives as an import and is assessed as one. The mental model of staying under the limit does not transfer.
Rates are set by category rather than by a single flat number, and Aruba’s own published guidance puts basic goods somewhere between 0% and 12%. Where an item lands depends on how it is classified, which is not always obvious from the product page. Curaçao is a separate customs territory with its own tariff and thresholds — do not assume anything you learned about one island applies to the other.
We are not going to print duty percentages here, and you should be suspicious of any site that does. Tariffs change without announcement and classification is item-specific. Two reliable moves instead: ask your forwarder for a landed-cost estimate before you ship, and check the current position at douane.aw for Aruba, or your island’s customs authority, for anything above pocket money.
What this means for a project
Split your shopping list in two before you price anything.
The small metal parts that decide whether a structure survives — marine-grade turnbuckles, eye bolts, stainless fixings, the kind of hardware discussed in Shade Sails vs. Pergolas — are worth importing. They are flat, dense, hard to source locally at the right grade, and they fail cheap alternatives within a season. The same goes for a plancha plate or a burner from Outdoor Kitchen Heat Sources.
The structure itself you build here. The timber, the block, the stone, the labour. Not because importing is impossible, but because the rule of three is real at that size and the maths stops working.
FAQ
Is the rule of three accurate?
As a bulky-goods estimate, roughly. For small flat items shipped direct with duties collected at checkout, it substantially overestimates — and it will talk you out of purchases that made sense.
Why does a light item sometimes cost more to ship than a heavy one?
Carriers bill on dimensional weight, calculated from box size, whenever that exceeds actual weight. You are paying for space, not mass.
Should I use a forwarder or ship direct?
Direct where the retailer offers it, particularly if import charges are collected at checkout. A forwarder where they refuse the destination, or where consolidating several orders into one shipment saves more than it costs.
Our iguana’s take
He has never paid an import duty and considers the entire system beneath him. He does concede that everything worth having on this island arrived here somehow.
In one line
Multiply by three for anything that needs a pallet. For anything that fits in a flat box, check the actual number before you talk yourself out of it.
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