Gulf International Shipping is a shipping company from Makkah to Syria that collects household furniture, cartons, family parcels and shop stock from the districts of Makkah and its governorates, drives them through Jordan in transit to the Jaber border post, and then has the load moved inside Nassib’s customs yard onto a licensed Syrian truck for the final leg to the receiver’s door. A load leaving Makkah reaches Damascus, Daraa and Suwayda in roughly 7–10 working days, Homs and Hama a day or two after that, and Aleppo, Latakia and Tartus two or three days later. Gulf International Shipping prices start at SAR 138 for a small parcel up to 5 kg, SAR 230 for a carton or suitcase, SAR 1,380 for a complete bedroom and SAR 4,140 for a dedicated truck carrying a whole home.
Few of the calls we get from Makkah are about trade cargo. They are closing down a home they have lived in for years: a Syrian family whose father has finished his job in the region, a mother heading to Damascus ahead of her husband with the children’s things, or a young man sending the appliances and gifts he has collected to his parents in Daraa. So this guide is written from the point of view of a family moving from Makkah back to Syria: when to start preparing, how to get the used furniture exemption from Syrian customs, what happens to your belongings at the border, what you will pay, and what you cannot take in.
At a glance
- Route: Makkah → Madinah → Tabuk → Halat Ammar → transit across Jordan → Jaber → Nassib → delivery to your Syrian address
- Distance: about 1,650–1,700 km from Makkah to Damascus, depending on road and crossing
- Road transit time: about 7–10 working days for Damascus and Daraa; Aleppo and the coast take 2–3 days longer
- At the border: Saudi trucks are barred from driving inside Syria for now, so our team switches the load onto a Syrian truck in the Nassib yard
- Air freight: flown out of Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz Airport to Damascus, starting at SAR 23 a kilo and taking 3–5 days to reach the receiver
- Prices: parcels of up to 5 kg cost from SAR 138, a carton at SAR 230, a bedroom from SAR 1,380, a whole home in a dedicated truck from SAR 4,140
- Returnees’ furniture: duty-free once under conditions, the key one being an inventory certified by a Syrian embassy or consulate
From: Makkah · To: Damascus, Daraa, Homs, Aleppo and the coast · Time: 7–10 working days · 0568829975
Does a truck drive straight from Makkah into Syria?
No, and this is the first thing to understand before you compare companies. At present, Saudi-plated trucks may not drive inside Syria at all. The Syrian rule now in force restricts entry to Syrian trucks, with an exception only for transit trucks escorted by customs police. Your shipment therefore travels in two legs: our truck from Makkah to Jordan’s Jaber crossing, then a licensed Syrian truck from the Nassib customs yard to your front door.
Moving the load from one truck to the other inside the customs yard is called transshipment (in Arabic, al-munaqala). It happens in front of Syrian customs officers: the goods are unloaded and then loaded again. At Gulf International Shipping we arrange this step in advance. The Syrian truck is booked before ours arrives, our crew stays with the goods while they come off and go back on, and the numbered inventory travels with the load so that what left Makkah matches what arrives in Damascus or Daraa.
Be careful with “one truck, door to door”
If someone promises that the truck loaded at your home in Makkah will pull up at your home in Syria without any change, either they do not know the current rules or they mean something else. Door-to-door delivery is possible and we provide it, but it includes a transfer at Nassib, and what separates one company from another is how well that transfer is handled.
For border procedures, opening hours and truck queues in detail, read our Nassib border crossing guide for shipments from Saudi Arabia.
Approximate shipping prices from Makkah to Syria
No company publishes a price list for Makkah on this route, so our prices are built on the published Jeddah rates, Jeddah being the nearest priced city at about 80 km, and then set below the lowest advertised figure. Each cell holds two figures: the smaller is our entry price, the larger is where bulkier or extra-packed loads tend to end up.
Note: road shipments from Makkah reach Damascus and Daraa in roughly 7–10 working days and Aleppo or Latakia in 9–13, depending on queues at Jaber and Nassib, the transfer and clearance; an air parcel through Jeddah airport is handed over 3–5 days after collection, subject to flights and how fast clearance goes.
Single-item prices from Makkah
Many orders do not need a whole truck: a fridge for the family home, a bedroom set for newlyweds, a single sofa. These are the starting prices per item on a shared truck to Syria:
You can insure the load if you wish, at 0.9% or more of the value you put on it. For a city-by-city comparison, read shipping prices from Saudi Arabia to Syria.
A plan for families moving back from Makkah to Syria
Families who leave preparation to the last minute usually pay more, because the decision turns into “send everything now” instead of “send what is worth sending”. Here is a timeline we suggest to anyone closing a home in Makkah; adjust it to your own situation:
What is worth shipping? A rule of thumb we give every family: good solid-wood bedrooms, sofas you bought new, appliances only a few years old, rugs and personal belongings are all worth it. A wardrobe that has been taken apart many times, or an old fridge that eats electricity, is better sold in Makkah and replaced in Syria. Remember, too, that the returnee exemption has quantity limits, and anything beyond them will be charged.
Customs exemption for a returning Syrian’s furniture: what are the conditions?
The rules most recently published let a Syrian coming home to settle bring used household furniture and personal effects in duty-free, a single time, under practical conditions that must be met before loading, not after:
- Time abroad: at least six months outside Syria.
- Inventory: stamped by Syria’s embassy or one of its consulates in the country where you live, in this case Saudi Arabia.
- Owner present: the owner must be present or arrive in Syria for clearance.
- Shipped from the country of residence: the goods leave Saudi Arabia, not a third country.
- Signs of use: personal, non-commercial and clearly used.
- Quantities: a single household’s worth: no more than three bedrooms, two lounge suites, one dining set, three rugs, a single unit of each appliance and one dozen metal or glass kitchen sets.
- No disposal: exempt goods stay with you; selling them within three years is not allowed.
- Anything over the limits: pays duties and taxes, and cars are outside the exemption.
A new customs law
Syria now has a fresh general customs law, alongside a single unified tariff. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says the new law still lets returnees bring their personal belongings, work tools and household furniture when they return for permanent residence. We have seen no new implementing instructions that change the old limits, so we recheck the conditions with the Syrian side ahead of each shipment.
Brand-new furniture with invoices, or appliances that have never left their packaging, count as new goods, not household effects; they are dutiable under their own tariff line. We do not quote a single percentage here because it varies from line to line. We cover this in depth in Syria used household goods customs and the returnee exemption.
Collection points across Makkah city and region
In Makkah, the mountains shape every move. Many homes in the older districts sit on hillsides, reached by steps or narrow lanes where a large truck cannot go. So every order starts with a simple question: can the truck stop at your door? If not, we send a small van to carry your things from the door to the big truck on the nearest wide road, and our crew carries the pieces down the steps by hand.
During the Hajj season, traffic inside Makkah and on the roads into it is subject to special arrangements, and getting trucks into districts near the central area becomes harder. If you can, set your loading date two weeks before the season or after it, or gather your things in a warehouse outside the busy zone and we will load from there. In Ramadan we prefer morning loading, before traffic builds up.
If you need to hand the flat back to the landlord before the truck date, we offer temporary storage for your wrapped belongings in a covered warehouse until departure.
How do we pack your things to survive two loadings instead of one?
Furniture bound for Syria is loaded at least twice: in Makkah, and again in the Nassib yard onto the Syrian truck. Every new loading means new hands and new corners to knock against. That is why our packing for this route differs from a local move:
- Several layers: bubble wrap on surfaces, corrugated card on corners, then an outer stretch film that keeps dust out along the desert road.
- Wooden crates for glass and marble: mirrors, marble table tops and chandeliers go into closed wooden crates.
- Numbering and matching: every item gets its own number, written beside it on the inventory, plus a photo once it is wrapped.
- Evenly weighted cartons: no carton heavier than two workers can lift comfortably, so nothing is thrown or dragged during the transfer.
- Appliances drained: fridges, washers and air conditioners are emptied of water and gas, with doors and drums secured.
- Clear markings: “fragile” and “this way up” in Arabic on every delicate carton, because the crews at Nassib read Arabic.
A tip from the road
Gold, cash, key documents and the medicines you take every day should travel with you, never in the truck. Pack a “first night” carton with bedding, basic kitchen things and chargers, and ask us to load it last so it comes off first in Syria.
The truck’s route from Makkah to Nassib through Jordan
The usual route for Makkah loads runs north on the Hijrah road to Madinah, then on to Tabuk and the Halat Ammar crossing on the Jordanian border. Across the line, Jordan’s post at that point is Al Mudawwara; from there the truck continues via Ma’an and Amman to the Jaber crossing in northern Jordan, and on to Nassib on the Syrian side. Loads consolidated with cargo from Riyadh and Qassim may instead leave through Al Haditha, which faces Al Omari in Jordan.
The total distance from Makkah to Damascus is about 1,650–1,700 km, depending on the road and crossing. Beyond Damascus a load still has about 332 km to Latakia, 162 km to Homs or 362 km to Aleppo. Nassib never closes, yet at busy times and while expansion works go on a truck may sit for a day or more, and Jordan has added a fresh holding yard at Jaber with room for roughly 200 loaded trucks to shorten the queues. For the Jordanian leg in more detail, see land freight from Saudi Arabia to Jordan.
How long does shipping from Makkah to Syria take?
Four things add up to the total time: driving from Makkah to Halat Ammar, crossing Jordan, waiting and transferring at Nassib, and delivery inside Syria. The driving barely changes; the borders are the variable part. The figures below are approximate for a dedicated road shipment, and a shared load that waits for the truck to fill adds 3–5 days:
Every figure here moves with the queues at Jaber and Nassib and with the speed of the reload and clearance. We do not promise you a fixed day before we see the border slot, but we give you a realistic estimate when you book and update it if anything changes on the road.
Delivery in Daraa, Suwayda, Damascus and the other governorates
Because loads enter Syria from the south, Daraa, Suwayda and Quneitra come first on the delivery schedule, then Damascus and its countryside, then the central governorates, the coast and the north. The Syrian truck stops at each address, the crew carries the goods inside, and the owner signs for them after the numbers are checked against the inventory.
In some lanes of old Damascus and in Suwayda villages with narrow alleys we use a smaller vehicle for the last stretch, just as we do on Makkah’s hillsides. Where the flat sits up several flights with no lift, we say so in the quote, so the delivery day brings no extra charge.
Car shipping from Makkah to Syria: who qualifies?
Before any price, a fact many adverts leave out: the door to importing used cars into Syria for local use is closed for now, so no shipper can take your used car in to be registered there. The cases we actually ship are:
- A new car: a recent model, at most two model years old, as the current import decision requires, with customs duty under the current tariff (roughly 20% on petrol models and 10% on fully electric ones).
- Temporary entry: for an expatriate who drives or ships his own car for temporary use and then takes it back, subject to residence-period and no-sale conditions; we confirm the permitted period before shipping.
- Transit: a car crossing Syria to another country under transit procedures.
Motorcycles are refused at the Syrian border whether new or used, so leave yours out of the furniture load. Rumours have circulated about used imports reopening for a token fee, and the relevant Syrian authorities have denied them; do not buy a car in Makkah on the strength of an unofficial post.
A qualifying car rides an enclosed or open car carrier to Nassib once we have finished its Saudi export on Absher and Fasah. A sedan starts at SAR 3,220, an SUV at SAR 4,140 and a luxury model at SAR 5,520. Full details are in car shipping from Saudi Arabia to Syria.
Air freight from Makkah to Damascus via Jeddah airport
Makkah has no international airport, so its air parcels fly out of Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International, some 80 km down the road. There are direct Jeddah–Damascus flights every day, subject to the airline schedule, with a flight time of about two hours twenty minutes. We collect the parcel from your home in Makkah, hand it to airport cargo, and after clearance in Damascus it reaches the receiver 3–5 days after we picked it up, subject to flights and customs.
Rates begin at SAR 23 a kilo, or SAR 230 for a 10 kg parcel. It suits official papers, permitted personal medicines, small electronics and urgent gifts; for furniture and large appliances, road freight is far cheaper. Air deliveries to Aleppo usually connect through Riyadh, or through Damascus and then by road. Details in air freight from Saudi Arabia to Syria.
What about sea freight from Jeddah to Latakia?
With Jeddah port so close to Makkah, it is a natural question. Full commercial containers can go by sea to Latakia or Tartus on request, through transshipment services, but that route does not suit household furniture, cars or parcels, because it takes longer and involves more paperwork. Family belongings therefore go by road through Jordan.
Shipping cartons, family parcels and gifts from Makkah to Syria
In Syrian families, an “amana” is the parcel an expatriate sends home: clothes for Eid, small appliances, a prayer rug, permitted medicines, books for the children. We combine these parcels on shared runs to bring the cost down and deliver each one in the owner’s name in their Syrian town. A small amana of up to 5 kg begins at SAR 138, while a parcel of up to 20 kg, a carton or a suitcase begins at SAR 230.
- Label each carton, outside and on a slip inside, with who is receiving it in Syria and a phone number.
- Keep liquid foods away from clothes, and seal jars tightly.
- Dates and dry sweets are accepted in commercial packaging; foodstuffs start at SAR 460 per consignment.
- Documents and official papers start at SAR 184, and are best sent by air if urgent.
For weights and sizes, see cartons and parcels shipping to Syria.
Shipping shop stock and trade goods from Makkah to Syria
Some of our Makkah clients send goods to traders in Damascus and Aleppo: clothing, perfume, household wares, spare parts. Trade goods move with their invoice and packing list, sometimes a certificate of origin too, and Nassib clears them under the matching Syrian tariff line. Heavy goods start at SAR 1,380 per consignment, light goods at SAR 276 per cubic metre and heavy equipment at SAR 2,760, and a dedicated truck for a full load starts at SAR 4,140. See also land freight from Saudi Arabia to Syria for full and part loads.
Documents required for shipping from Makkah to Syria
Our team raises the export declaration and reserves a Fasah arrival slot ahead of Halat Ammar, and we follow up with the broker at Nassib. What we need from you is complete, correct paperwork before loading day.
What cannot be shipped from Makkah to Syria?
These are the main banned and restricted items, and we check each case before shipping:
- Motorcycles of every type; e-bikes may also be restricted.
- Weapons, ammunition and anything resembling them, and narcotics.
- Two-way radios, plus remote-control toy planes, cars and boats.
- Goods of Israeli origin.
- Gas cylinders, chemicals and flammable liquids.
- Large sums of cash without a permit.
- Leaving Saudi Arabia: no antiquities, no subsidised goods, nothing on the export ban list.
Steps to ship from Makkah to Syria
- 1Send your list and photos
On WhatsApp 0568829975, with your Makkah district and Syrian town. - 2Get your price and departure date
Shared, dedicated or air: we recommend one, then fix the cost and your truck. - 3Certify the inventory
For returnees’ furniture: Syrian embassy or consulate certification before loading. - 4Packing day
The crew arrives at your door, then numbers and photographs every piece. - 5Export and transit
Export declaration and Fasah slot, then Halat Ammar and Jordan in transit to Jaber. - 6Transfer at Nassib
Syrian customs clear the load and it moves to a Syrian truck while we watch. - 7Delivery and assembly
Unloading inside the home, inventory check and room assembly on request.
Work out the cost of your Makkah to Syria shipment
Share a few photos, your district and where in Syria the goods are going, and you will hear back with a cost and the next northbound departure.
What decides the cost of shipping from Makkah to Syria?
Weight alone does not set the price. These are the factors we look at before giving you a figure:
- Volume in cubic metres: furniture takes more space than its weight suggests, so it is usually priced by volume.
- Shared or dedicated: a shared truck is cheaper and slower; a dedicated one is faster and dearer.
- Syrian governorate: Damascus and Daraa are closer than Aleppo or Qamishli.
- Access: steps and lanes on Makkah’s hillsides, and high floors with no lift.
- Special packing: wooden crates for glass and marble.
- Transfer and clearance: customs-yard charges and the broker’s fee at Nassib.
- Insurance: from 0.9% of declared value if you choose it.
A rough example: a family in Al Aziziyah sends a full bedroom set (from SAR 1,380), plus a large fridge (from SAR 1,100), a washing machine (from SAR 550) and ten cartons of clothes and household things (from SAR 230 each) to Damascus as a shared load. That comes to roughly SAR 5,330 and up, excluding clearance and insurance; if the load grows a little a dedicated truck may come out close in price, so we show you both options.
The cheapest way to ship from Makkah to Syria
- Shared truck: your bill covers only the space you fill; the cost is 3–5 more days on the road.
- Sell old, heavy items: a tired washing machine is rarely worth its freight.
- Dismantle what you can: well-dismantled rooms take up less volume.
- Avoid peak seasons: demand for trucks rises before Hajj and the holidays.
- Use the exemption: a certified inventory saves you full customs duty on used furniture.
Common mistakes when shipping from Makkah to Syria
- Leaving the inventory certification until after loading, so the goods arrive without the exemption.
- Packing new appliances in their boxes among used furniture without declaring them, so they are charged or the load is held.
- Believing a promise of a “Saudi truck all the way to Damascus”, which does not match the current rules.
- Putting a motorcycle or a gas cylinder in with the household goods.
- Not mentioning steps or a narrow lane when asking for a price, so the price changes on loading day.
- Letting gold and original papers ride in the cartons rather than in your own bag.
Payment, insurance and tracking
You pay in riyals in Saudi Arabia and get a written breakdown of everything the price includes. We follow the truck on the road and update you when it leaves Makkah, clears Halat Ammar, reaches Jaber and then Nassib, and when the Syrian truck sets off on delivery. Cover is optional; it pays for damage as set out in the policy, which we walk you through before booking.
Why choose Gulf International Shipping for your Makkah to Syria shipment?
The rules as they are
We explain the Nassib transfer and the car restrictions before you pay.
Below advertised prices
Every item starts below the lowest published rate for Jeddah, Makkah’s nearest priced city.
Hillside experience
We choose the right vehicle for steps and lanes before loading day.
Packing for two loadings
Layers, numbering and wooden crates built for the transfer.
Followed to your door
Updates at every crossing until the last carton is delivered.
One number
Calls and WhatsApp on 0568829975.
Related Syria guides
- Start here: shipping company from Saudi Arabia to Syria
- Family furniture: furniture moving from Saudi Arabia to Syria
- From neighbouring Jeddah: shipping from Jeddah to Syria
- From Taif: shipping from Taif to Syria
- From Madinah: shipping company from Madinah to Syria
- From Tabuk, the nearest loading point: shipping from Tabuk to Syria
- All routes: shipping destinations, furniture moving abroad, land freight and customs clearance
