An exceptional freight forwarder should be able to use their skills, experience and networks to offer several advantages to you and your business. By extension, smoothing out your operations & minimising expenses.
There are many advantages to working with an experienced freight forwarder. Let’s touch base on 5 specific advantages so that you can leverage them against potential partnerships with freight forwarders and what they should have to offer.
Cutting Confusing Costs
Let’s take the example of invoices you might receive from a shipping line. They might list many confusing terms such as demurrage, fuel surcharges, terminal handling fees, etc. More often than not, the invoices are not very transparent, and you will be expected to pay for them even when you don’t know what exactly they are.
This is where your partnership with a freight forwarder will come in handy. They can assess these costs for you and explain what each line item means. They might even be able to remove some of the items that are not relevant to you – assisting you in reducing costs.
Assistance on Consolidations
First of all: what is consolidation?
When you’re shipping what is referred to as LCL’s (less-than-container loads: in other words, your cargo doesn’t occupy the full capacity of the shipping container), your cargo goes into consolidation.
A freight forwarder’s role in this process is highly beneficial. They can assist you with piecing together which cargo should fit into which containers before sending them on their merry way – almost like playing “Tetris” with various shipments.
You might even get more benefit from working with a freight forwarder who does business in your area specifically, since they would have access to more companies’ shipments and would therefore be able to fill up a container more efficiently. This is important since consolidated shipments are not shipped until the container is full.
Guidance on Different Shipping Methods
Freight Forwarders work with a multitude of different shipping methods such as ocean, truck and air freight. Their experience with these carriers allows them to see which method might best suit your needs at any given time.
For example, if you examine companies making continual shipments of smaller capacities to and from China, all of the ocean freight charges amount up to much more than an air freight’s flat handling fee. Forwarders can help you spot these situations.
Paperwork and Customs Clearance
One of the core roles of a freight forwarder is to assist you with confusing paperwork that is required for the importing and exporting of certain items to certain countries.
They are clued-up on what items are prohibited and what paperwork is required of you when shipping certain items. This knowledge can save you from massive delays and/or fines if you don’t know about them.
Improving your Logistic Flow
An experienced freight forwarder can help you spot places in your supply chain that could function more efficiently and create processes that would promote that efficiency which will ultimately impact your bottom line significantly.
Some of these benefits would include decreased inventory carrying costs as well as shipping costs, eliminating unnecessary warehouse space and so on and so forth.
Feel free to give Dedicated Freight a call today to clear up any further queries you might have. We are here to help you succeed in business.