What Is Freight Forwarding?
Freight forwarding is the dynamic process of coordinating the movement of shipments between multiple carriers on the behalf of shippers. It also accomplishes other tasks such as sub-processes such as customs brokerage and warehouse planning.
Significance of Freight Forwarding in an E-commerce Shipping and Delivery
Freight forwarding plays a significant role for suppliers in executing logistics on their behalf. Below are the benefits of using freight forwarding.
- Compliance: Sellers often face trouble clearing the updated customs formalities in different countries. A self-freight forwarding plan or an outsourced shipping company with a freight forwarding process can allow a seller to ship products to other countries without learning and overseeing the customs.
- Lower transit times: Processes such as warehouse planning, custom clearance, and cargo insurance take up much time. Freight forwarding allows one to reduce time in each mentioned task. It adds up to a lower transit time, resulting in happier customers.
Prerequisites of Freight Forwarding and How It Works
One needs to have a requirement to ship products to leverage freight forwarding. A step-by-step process on how freight forwarding works has been given below.
- Planning: A plan for processing products and managing all the related processes like warehousing, insurance brokerage, and more are created.
- Documentation: Documents such as invoices, export/import bills, insurance, bill of lading, and product lists are required.
- Execution: The plan is executed per the phase of the shipping life cycle.
Use Case With Freight Forwarding
A use case for freight forwarding is described below.
- An Australia-based retailer creates a freight forwarding plan to ship a custom-made suit to the Philippines. The retailer hires an international warehouse and shipping while providing all the required documents.
