A $35 shirt, and $18.32 at the door
What decides the bill on an order between Canada and the US, why mail and courier land so differently, and how to see it before the order ships.
A store charges $9.99 for shipping. Its printer in the US charges $21.39 for the label. The order goes to Alberta by mail, and before the customer can have their $35 shirt, they pay another $18.32 at the door. Sent by courier, the same shirt to the same address would have cost them nothing.
Nobody did anything wrong. The costs were simply invisible until the order was gone. That one order is why we built Othermile, and what follows is what it taught us, in plain terms, for any store shipping between Canada and the US.
Four things decide what the customer pays
Which way the parcel is going
Into the US there is no small-parcel allowance any more. The US suspended its duty-free allowance for low-value parcels on August 29, 2025, so a parcel from Canada now pays the ordinary duty for its tariff code from the first dollar, plus any extra tariff on the country where the goods were made.
How it travels
Into Canada, the carrier changes the arithmetic. Courier parcels from the US get more room: no tax up to C$40 and, in most cases, no duty up to C$150. Mail gets a lower C$20 limit, and Canada Post adds a handling fee when anything is owed. That is the whole difference between $18.32 and nothing.
Where it was made, not where it was printed
Customs looks at where a garment was sewn. A blank sewn in Asia and printed in North America is, for most customs purposes, a shirt made in Asia, and it carries whatever that country carries at the border that week. Print-on-demand stores get caught by this more than anyone, because the store never touches the blank.
What changed this month
The rules move, and not slowly. Between August 22 and September 29, 2026 the US changed its tariffs on Canadian goods three times, including outright bans. On September 8, 2026 Canada added surtaxes to more than 700 US products, with clothing in the 50% group. A route that was cheap in the spring can be the expensive one now.
Some customers pay it and never order again. Some refuse the parcel, and the store pays to ship it back. Either way the margin on that order is gone, and the store rarely finds out why.
What to do about it
None of this needs a customs department. It needs five habits, and the last one is the one that does the work.
- Know your tariff codes and where each product is made. Your supplier or print provider usually has both. Without them every estimate is a guess.
- Price both routes before you choose one. Mail is often cheaper to send and dearer to receive.
- Decide who pays. Shipping duty paid means you collect it at checkout and the customer pays nothing at the door; shipping duty unpaid leaves it to them. Either is a reasonable choice. Not knowing which one you are making is not. Othermile has a plain-language guide to the two.
- Write your limits down. The most you will lose on shipping, the lowest margin you accept, the most a customer may pay at the door.
- Check every order against them before it prints. Not after the complaint, and not once a quarter in a spreadsheet.
The cheapest label is not the cheapest way to ship.
How we check our own orders
That last habit is the one people drop, because it has to happen on every order and nobody has the time. So we built software to do it.
Othermile connects to the store or the printer, prices every route an order could take using the US and Canadian rules in force that day, and gives each order one of four outcomes: released, switched to a better route, held for an OK on the owner’s phone, or blocked. ClutchCloth, our own apparel brand, runs every order through it. The case study covers how it was designed and why it asks rather than guesses.
Several of its tools are free and need no account. If you sell across the border, start with these:
- The border cost audit reads your store’s order export and shows what your customers already paid at the door. The file stays in your browser.
- The checker prices a single parcel by mail and by courier.
- The tariff tracker follows what an order of common products owes at the border over time.
- Tariff alerts email you when the rules for a product you pick change, and stay quiet otherwise.
This note explains public rules in plain language as they stood in October 2026. It is not customs, tax or legal advice: the exact tariff code, your paperwork and the carrier decide the final amount, and a licensed customs broker should confirm anything you are unsure about.
We build Shopify and ecommerce stores in Calgary for businesses that sell across Alberta, Canada and the border. If you would rather ask a question than fill in a form, Atlas answers directly, or you can get in touch.
Tell us what you sell and where it goes. We have already paid for this lesson on our own orders.
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