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Tips for Choosing A Good Freight Broker

If you are running a business in export/import, you must have heard of freight forwarder and freight broker. You might think they are doing the same job, but actually, they are not. Freight broker forges a chain between retailers, wholesalers, and manufactures to make sure products get to its destinations safely and timely.

Freight broker became a profession at the early party of 20 century. Freight brokers can be individuals, companies, or organizations. There are thousands of brokers around the world, most of them are not working as full time, because it is not a legal necessity to have a formal qualifications. But if you want to become a freight broker, you still need to get training. In United States, freight broker licenses are issued by FMCSA, and you must be able to prove adequate insurance coverage to cover client’s losses.

Take this into account before you hiring a freight broker. Communication are VERY important in this industry. Ask them how they view a selection for correspondence, how they find proper carriers, what they do to make sure correct pick-up. Because not all carriers are reliable and trustworthy.

You can get information for free on freight companies’ websites or freight company directories (for example, you can find ForestShipping at FreightDirectories.com). Freight forwarder directories usually list companies by category. There are some different categories, such as: Shipping Companies, Trucking Companies, Air Freight Companies, and etc. If you are not familiar with freight broker, you should use freight company directories to get some useful information, like:

1．Do they offer discount

2．When did they established

You still have to find out if a freight broker has value-added services, and if yes, what they are. Ask them how they process and what they do if things go wrong. The more details they give you, the more reliable they could be. Also ask for a free quote, compare the price with other brokers before you get them to ship your products.

In United States, companies which are the members of TIA (Transportation intermediaries Association) have to follow very strict rules. You will be safe if you are working with one of those companies.

At last, write a contract with a freight broker is always necessary, it will avoid problem about establishing responsibilities during the cooperation.

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How To Cut Down International Shipping Cost

International freight shipping is an complicated process which involves many different operations, like: tax, customs clearance and etc. Because of the complexity and there are many things that need to be considered, the cost of international shipping could be very high.  But there are something you can do to hep you save extra money. You might want to keep these things in mind, if you are running an export/import business or international trade business which needs oversea transportation.

 To save your money, it does not mean that you have to lower your demands to find service at lower price, you can still use service as good as you used before or service even better. And even better, you save your money no matter discounts are provided by freight forwarding companies or not.

 The first thing that might help you save money is: use ocean shipping and air shipping wisely. In order to do that, you should know the differences between them.

Time Efficiency: Sea shipping usually takes weeks or even month to delivery products from a county to another, but air shipping only takes days.

Cost: Sea shipping is always much cheaper than air shipping.

By knowing the differences, use the air shipping ONLY when your products are time sensitive, otherwise use sea shipping as your first choice. This would save your money in first place.

Packing 

Volume of your shipment is one of the most important factors that determine the cost of shipping. And that is why I put packing on the top of the other things. By knowing how to accommodate your products in the least possible space, you will save A LOT of money.

If you are using large boxes for packing, see if you can dismantle them and use smaller ones instead. Because the smaller boxes can be put in space which larger ones can not, so your shipment can be better consolidated. By doing this will significantly cut down the cost of international shipping.

Container

Usually, you can choose containers in two different sizes: 40 foot container and 20 foot container. Of course there are bigger and smaller containers you can use, but it would cost you more because even the shipping companies do not use them much, that means you will have to get/ buy one yourself. So I will not recommend those containers for you. Depending on the volume of your shipment, you can choose to use a full container or share the container with others to split the cost.

If your products are not sensitive or need to be separated, sharing container with other people will be your best choice to save money.

  Time

Time is money, faster shipping always cost you a lot more. If time efficiency is not something you care about, use ships which have many stops on its way to the destinations will definitely save you a lot of money. Negotiate

 Negotiation is the last thing you should do, but it is also very important. Negotiate with international freight companies about the price of shipping will help you know how they charge and find good service at low price.

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How to Calculate The Cost Of Ocean Shipping

As the technology improves, international ocean shipping becomes more and more timely, safer and faster. International sea freight companies use ships to help their customers transport cargo to from a country to another.

As you know, price of the ocean shipping could be very high, so it is necessary for you to know the cost for ocean shipping before you get your goods shipped to another country.

Some factors like: Kind of goods, destination of your cargo and fluctuations in the market influence the cost of shipping and make the cost different every time you use shipping service. If you have worked with sea freight companies before, you must have learned that the cost will not be the same even if you are using the same service next time.

To better control your budget, you need to know how to calculate the cost of shipping service you need. Here, I am going to show you how:

There are something important that you should know about before heading to the calculation.

The weight of your shipment, you do not have to know it precisely, just give it a rough estimate.

The volume of your shipment. Volume is an important factor because it decides whether you need a full container or not. A larger volume will cost you more than a smaller volume, so do whatever you can to condense your shipment into smaller packages. There are containers in 40 feet and 20 feet, if you don’t have enough items for a full container, you can use LCL service from freight forwarder companies to save money.

To get more precise data, you need to calculate the total volume of your shipment, in cubic meters. Because many sea freight companies will charge your goods according to the volume of your shipment not the weight.

When you have the weight and volume of your shipment, go contact a sea shipping company. To get an exact quote, you might have to provide destination, kind of product, size of shipment, origin, volume of shipment along with the weight of your shipment.

At the end, you still need to be familiar with custom clearance, taxes and some other charges. Those information is available on the website of the respective port authority of all countries. You will have a rough estimate about how much it is gonna cost you by adding all the costs up.

For someone who do not have much time to calculate the cost, I recommend you to find a freight forwarder and get quote from them. They will help you with all the calculation, but you still need to know the weight and volume of your shipment.