What can freight forwarders do for you?

The global freight forwarding industry is highly dynamic and interlinked in many ways. The domestic and international transportation service providers such as trucking businesses, rail cargo services and ocean and air shipping companies are all inter connected by freight forwarding businesses on a day to day basis.
In North America, transportation between the US and Canada for instance, is handled by many trucking businesses which are connected to freight forwarders. These forwarding businesses are, in turn, all connected with the transporters as well as other forwarders to create a continent-wide network which works to ensure minimum cost and transportation times for the ever moving supply chain of consumer goods.

Freight Forwarding Services

Freight forwarding companies basically act as intermediaries between producers and distributors who wish to ship goods and the various types of transportation companies who specialize in transporting different types of cargo (by land sea or air) to destinations both domestically and internationally (or both).

The freight forwarding industry is highly competitive. Companies compete on the basic of locality and specialization in terms of the types of goods they transport (some companies specialize in local transportation or domestic-cargo only; e.g. a business may specialize in transporting goods within Ontario only, while other companies may specialize in the end to-end transportation of perishable goods only; e.g. a company may specialize in transporting fresh fruit or frozen goods). The ultimate objective of such companies is to provide their own clients the benefits of their expertise in handling transportation requirements and logistics with the least cost and least time turnover.

Freight booking

One of the most dynamic and complex aspects of freight forwarding is freight-booking. Freight forwarders may be asked to manage small amounts - LCL (less than container load) - goods or even extremely large amounts (which may require, for instance, a number of 43 foot high cube containers). In addition, they also have to regularly manage the transportation needs of several clients at a time (some with smaller needs and others with goods that need months at a time to ship). How do they do this? They operate on a cooperative basis with other freight forwarders and their own preferred transporting companies to find the 'space' available on various routes. This space may be part of a container which is empty for use (so that it can be efficiently put to use) or even several containers (on a cargo-ship for example). Forwarders act to make the most efficient use of the space available and usually need to act fast to locate and book this space (usually through the use of a network of agents and businesses which they can cooperate with); speed cost and reliability are the main aspects to consider.

A good example to consider is the Canadian freight industry which comprises of the air freight, rail, lake, ocean and trucking industry. International ports are connected to inland docks, and these are, in turn connected to the road/ rail networks which lead to end-recipients or originators of goods. Managing transportation needs across the vast Canadian country is a complex task (there are 10,000 trucking business alone in Canada). Freight forwarding businesses have the knowledge and experience to connect and efficiently use these resources in order to transport goods as cheaply as possible and on time.

References:
Wikipedia[dot]com