Freight Forwarders

International Freight Shipping

Welcome back to Freight Forwarders for another informative and interesting article on one of the many aspects of this fascinating and important industry.

International freight shipping can appear to be a complex and long drawn out process to anyone who isn’t aware of the industry from this aspect. However, this need not be the case and should you require to ship any goods internationally, no matter how small or how large, making the best use of a well known and reputable freight forwarding company can make the whole process go as smoothly as silk!

That’s why freight forwarders are there in the first place, when you think about it. They have the necessary expertise and experience to take your goods and ensure that they are collected, transported and delivered to their destination with a minimum of fuss and with no stress or hassle to the customer.

The internal workings of this process are of course far more complex than they may appear on the surface. Most of the work undertaken by the freight forwarder will be completely transparent to the customer, which in most cases is a good thing as a client is unlikely to want to become bogged down with all the details that international freight shipping incurs.

Indeed, for an individual to take on such an undertaking would not be impossible, but would require a fair amount of work, as well as making sure that all the many details are understood and implemented to ensure safe passage of the goods. Problems can arise in these circumstances as with so many aspects of the process to be taken acre of, it is not difficult to make a mistake and omit one or two of those details, with potentially disastrous results.

This is why it is always the most expedient policy to make use of the services of a good freight forwarding company that can handle your goods, deal with packing and loading upon collection, ascertaining whether the load is FTL or LTL freight for transport from your location to the nearest shipping port and pricing the job accordingly, arranging for loading and cargo onto the correct ship that is heading for your goods’ destination, arranging for unloading and collection at the port of call and loading onto suitable road or rail transportation the coordinating delivery to suit the recipient. The take care of all the necessary paperwork, customs clearance at both outgoing and incoming ports. They also carry the all-important freight forwarders insurance which covers your goods for loss, damage and many other potential problems as well.

All these aspects of managing the smooth transport of your goods is readily undertaken by reputable transportation and logistics companies who are equally at home dealing with local pick up and deliveries, long distance road haulage nationally as well as acting as international freight shipping companies that are able to efficiently transport your goods to just about anywhere in the world.

Freight Forwarders

Freight Brokers

It has often been asked here at Freight Forwarders, what exactly are freight brokers and what role they play in the industry as a whole.

Freight brokers are basically the go betweens acting for the persons requiring goods to be transported and the freight forwarders and transportation companies themselves. A freight broker could also be known as that which is legally termed a Property Broker. It is this term that has been established in the US by the FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration). The FMCSA is a division of the Department of Transportation in the US.

A freight broker or property broker is therefore a term which is used to describe a licensed individual, or a corporation acting to assist in facilitating the successful transportation of goods undertaken by a freight shipper or authorized motor carrier and the customer.

Brokers are not, by law required to carry cargo or liability insurance. However, freight brokers are required to hold several legal documents which include:

  • A Broker’s Authority
  • Surety Bond or Trust Fund
  • Processing Agent

A Broker’s Authority is obtained for a $300 fee (currently) through the FMCSA upon filing out the form OP-1 and filing for authority.

A Surety Bond or Trust Fund is obtained from either a bank or a bonding company. The form that is required to be filed with this is known as the BMC-84 or BMC-85. Each brokerage company or individual entity is required to prove they are able to pay the various truck lines, airlines, railroads, or any other entity being used by the broker. Before a bond is issued, the individual’s credit and/or financial capacity is thoroughly investigated. This is because for some reason if the broker fails to pay the freight forwarder or transport company, the bonding company must instead pay.For this reason the bonding company is extremely cautious about who they decide to insure.

The Processing Agent is obtained by filling out form BOC-3 and costs $50.

A freight broker does not require a lawyer or other professional entity in order to file for a motor carrier or property broker authority. As for certification, there is actually only one level of broker, which is the Property Broker, or more commonly called the Freight Broker. The FMCSA does not recognize any other title.

That concludes this article, which we trust you found informative and useful.

Freight Forwarders

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