The first question on any cargo charter is not which aircraft but which dimensions. Weight matters, but it is the largest single piece that decides the aircraft type, because it has to physically go through a door. A load that is four metres long is a different problem from a load that is four tonnes, and a load that is both is a third problem again. We ask for length, width, height and weight per piece before anything else, and if the answer is an estimate we ask someone to measure it.
The second question is where the aircraft comes from. Charters are quoted from where the aircraft actually is, not from where you are, and the positioning leg is often a large share of the price. Occasionally that works in your favour: an aircraft that is already going to be empty in the right place at the right time is a materially cheaper charter, and it is worth asking whether your deadline has any flexibility at all before we go looking.
The third is the ground. A freighter needs loading equipment that matches the aircraft type, and not every airport has it. Main-deck loaders, high loaders, a nose-door capability, the ramp space to work, these are real constraints and they are the reason a charter sometimes goes to the airport ninety minutes away instead of the one down the road. We check handling capability at both ends before we commit to a routing, not after.
And then there is the paperwork, which on a charter is heavier rather than lighter. Overflight and landing permits take time in some airspace and are refused in others. Export documentation, dangerous-goods declarations where they apply, and the customs position at destination all have to be right before the aircraft moves, because an aircraft waiting on a document is the most expensive kind of waiting there is.
