The cardboard boxes that cram the place are full of stuff that customers from British Columbia buy on US websites, using a Sumas delivery address to avoid lengthy waits at customs and exorbitant international shipping costs.

It’s a few minutes’ drive, or a quick cross-border walk, for the 170,000 residents of the Abbotsford, British Columbia, metro area. Their enthusiasm for Web shopping has made Sumas the state’s top spot for online spending per resident: In 2014, it was $3,013, seven times the figure for Seattle, according to state Department of Revenue data on sales from 20 top online retailers.

Blaine, the last US stop on Interstate 5 en route to Vancouver, also had a disproportionate amount of online shopping: $2,705 per resident.

Most of that e-commerce is by Canadians, not residents — but the jobs and the sales-tax receipts are local just the same.

Even those remarkable numbers sell short the real strength of Internet commerce here. They do not include purchases made at companies such as Nordstrom or Target, which have large online operations but are primarily brick-and-mortar and therefore classified differently by regulators.

A look at US Postal Service figures may help round out the data: A postal spokesman said that last year it handled nearly 400,000 parcels for Sumas, or 272 per resident. That would be 22 times the US average.

The surge of cross-border online shopping is a new twist in the old story of US-Canada trade. Its intensity has meant an unexpected boost for Sumas and other US towns that have long seen their fortunes sway with shifting exchange rates and procedural changes at the border.

“Over the years we’ve seen the economy of Sumas ride the roller coaster of the Canadian dollar,” said Briana Kelley, president of the Sumas Chamber of Commerce.

That ride was often traumatic: In the late 1990s, the town was full of shuttered gas stations, in part victims of a sharp drop in the value of the Canadian dollar. The decline was further compounded by tighter border security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

These days, the strengthening US dollar means fewer Canadians are going to big-box stores in US cities, but the growing number of virtual shoppers has buffered the small border communities.

E-commerce “has created a new opportunity for local businesses,” Kelley said.

The Retail Council of Canada estimates that about 30 percent of Canadians’ online transactions are made abroad, mostly in the US

Because of import tariffs, different pricing and high distribution costs for Canadian retailers, shopping in America can look pretty appealing. Even US retailers operating in Canada suffer: A tire that sells for about $320 at Amazon.ca retails for $227 on the company’s US site.

And there’s much more variety available in the US

“If you’re a Canadian retailer on the border, you’re caught with one hand behind your back,” said Michael LeBlanc, the retail council’s senior vice president for marketing and digital retail.

The US impact of Canadian online shopping can be felt along the entire border. Residents of Ontario pick up their Web purchases in cities like Buffalo and Detroit.

But it’s perhaps most felt in Washington state, where the border is sparsely populated compared with the highly urban part of British Columbia on the other side.

About 15 percent of British Columbia residents, according to data from a survey by Vancouver consultancy Insights West, have some kind of US mailbox. That’s more people than live in Whatcom County, which borders the most populous part of the Canadian province.

“It means that there is significant impact on e-commerce,” said James McCafferty, assistant director for the Center for Economic and Business Research at Western Washington University.

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