International Freight Forwarding Company
Cargo transportation requires accurate schemes and comprehensive risk management procedures. It is possible to distinguish four main transportation modes such as sea, air, railroad and road transportation.
A mature international freight forwarding company will provide transportation with all of the mentioned modes. There is also multimodal transportation when cargo is delivered by more than one mode. Every international logistics company makes agreements with airports, ports and railway companies to provide the delivery of any kind of goods including refrigerated cargoes and high value goods. In addition, freight forwarding companies accumulate their own road vehicles fleets and hire additional cargo carriers to perform transportation. There are different types of road vehicles for different cargo types. There are heavy-weight trucks with semitrailers which perform the majority of usual shippings. There are also low-tonnage vehicles for lighter cargos. And there are refrigerating containers for frozen and perishable goods.
The cargo carrying vehicles for road cargo transportation are usually equipped with satellite navigation in order to track the cargo on its way to the destination point. Moreover, European freight forwarding companies should acquire vehicles which comply with EURO-4 and EURO-5 ecological standards. It is absolutely obligatory for every international logistics company to comply with these standards too if the transportation is accomplished on the territory of the European Union.
Criterias of Choosing a Freight Forwarding Company
This international logistics company should deliver all types of cargo with all four transportation modes worldwide. The company should have offices in many countries like Germany, Poland, Russia and Belarus. Among the cargo types the company is working with there are:
- oversized and bulky cargos;
- dangerous (or ADR) cargoes transportation;
- complicated cases in project transportation;
In addition the company should provide all services which are neccessary to complete the cargo trucking process: for instance custom clearance in the European Union or provide CMR-insurance policy for all goods in the project.
The company has also established solid cooperation with a number of airports worldwide which provides tariffs discounts and diminishes the overall transportation costs. Cargo transportation by sea is performed by the company across the major international routes. The cargo can be delivered to any port of the world. The company offers heavy and oversized cargo transportation with RO-RO marine vessels. The most difficult and expensive is perishable goods transportation. The container requires constant electricity supply and the transportation should be performed sharply on time. The majority of sea transportation companies limit the amount of containers requiring electricity supply for it is extremely difficult to provide technical support for them.
References:
http://cold.stanford.edu/mywiki/international_25freight_25forwarding_25company - main definitions and criterias for choosing a freight forwarding company on Stanford website
http://www.ric.edu.vn/forum/user/profile/16148.page - German freight forwarder profile