What Triggers a Customs Inspection, and What You Can Control

You cannot avoid a customs inspection. The CBSA and CBP decide what they look at, and no carrier, broker or shipper gets a say in it. What you can do is understand what raises your odds, and make sure that if your shipment is pulled, it clears quickly instead of sitting.

Most of our customers are caught off guard when it happens, because an inspection is unannounced and the costs attached to it are not small. Here is what actually puts a shipment in front of an officer.

Five reasons a shipment gets looked at

It is your first time

Customs inspects first-time shippers to check that goods are being declared properly. They have no history with your freight yet, and they want to see that the paperwork matches what is on the trailer. A clean first crossing is worth having.

You are flagged

The CBSA and CBP both keep lists of shippers and importers flagged for previous problems. Incorrect HS codes, understated values and mislabelled freight are the usual causes. A flag follows the importer, not the shipment, so one bad entry affects everything that comes after it.

The country of origin

Goods from countries under US or Canadian sanctions draw attention as a matter of course. So do goods from origins associated with a particular risk — we have seen shipments from China held for radiation screening and manufacturing checks. This has nothing to do with your paperwork and everything to do with where the goods started.

It is food, drugs or anything that goes on or in a person.

The FDA, the USDA and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency take their part of this seriously. If your shipment contains something that will be eaten, taken as medicine or applied to skin, the likelihood of examination is materially higher. That is the system working as intended.

It is simply your turn

A share of shipments is selected at random every year. You can do everything correctly and still be pulled, because random means random. There is nothing to fix when this is the reason.

What an inspection costs

Every scenario is different, and the charges are not ours — they come from the facilities and the carriers that have to do the work. Unloading and reloading a trailer, waiting time at the border, a truck refused entry, re-clearance of the freight: none of it is cheap for anyone involved, and handling fees in the hundreds to low thousands of dollars are normal rather than exceptional.

On an LTL trailer this matters more than people expect. A single trailer carries a lot of different shipments, and every one of them has to clear. One shipper's paperwork problem holds up everybody else's freight on that truck.

In Canada there is also the Administrative Monetary Penalty System. An AMPS penalty runs from $150 to $25,000 depending on the contravention and on your own penalty history, so the second offence costs considerably more than the first.

What the border guard asks for

An officer opening a trailer is identifying what is in it against what the paperwork says is in it. Four documents answer almost every question they have:

• the customs invoice
• the certificate of origin
• the bill of lading
• dangerous goods documentation, where any applies

Have them ready before the truck reaches the crossing rather than at it. Documents required for import and export goes through each one.

And answer plainly. Withholding something that then turns up in the inspection converts a ten-minute check into a long interview, and can end with the shipment refused entry — which is far more expensive than whatever the answer would have cost.

What you actually control

Three things, and they are the whole list:

• Get the paperwork right. The HS code, the declared value and the description have to match what is physically on the pallet. Most flags start as a mismatch somebody did not think mattered.
• Send it early. Give your customs broker and your carrier the commercial invoice and bill of lading before the freight moves, not when it reaches the border. That leaves time to fix a problem while fixing it is still cheap.
• Know your own history. If you have been penalised before, you are being watched more closely, and that is worth saying out loud to your broker rather than hoping it has been forgotten.

None of this reduces the random share. It reduces the share you caused, which is the part that is yours.

If you do not have a customs broker, we can get you set up with one of ours. Our customs clearance page sets out what we handle and what stays with you, and you can talk to us about a specific shipment any time.