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What’s International Freight Forwarder? When you look for job relating to Overseas, English, International and so on, you will find the job of the Freight Forwarder. But If you have never worked in this field, you will never know what you do as Freight Forwarder by checking only job description.

Today, I would like to explain the job of the Forwarder briefly for the person who is interested in this job field. I hope this information will help to understand our business.

Forwarding is one of the Logistics

First, You have to know “Logistics” in order to understand the Forwarder job since the Forwarder is one of the category of the Logistics.

In terms of Logistics, the cargo is delivered from Point A to Point B without any problem. the concept is quite simple. And usually customers request Forwarder to do it for the competitive price since Logistics is recognized as “cost” in most of the case.

What is Forwarder Job

The Forwarders arrange booking to the Shipping Line and Air Line(call it “Carrier” below) which is called for “Forwarding”. The Forwarders use the Carriers Vessel/Airplane space for delivery customer’s cargo, which means that the Forwarders do not have own Vessel/Airplane. This is the difference between the Forwarder and Carriers.

You might think why customer does not book directly to the Carriers. Yes. They can book to the carrier directly but it depends on the cargo volume.

For example, the big factory such as Toyota and Daikin book the Carrier directly since they have so many cargo volume to export.However, a factory which export the cargo to Japan and its volume only 1 or 2 container per month, the freight cost is very expensive from the Carriers.

In this case, it’s better for the customer to book to the Forwarder. The reason is that the Forwarder handle so many cargoes from the customers so that Forwarder can get the good freight cost by Carriers.

Total Logistics Arrangement

The Carriers (Shipping Line and AirLine) provide the service of Sea and Air shipment only. But Freight Forwarder can provide all different type logistics to the customers.

As I wrote on the above, the concept of Logistics is that the cargo is delivered from Point A to Point B without any problem. There are many steps and ways to delivered the cargo to the customers.

1. Forwarding (Booking to Carriers: Container, Consolidate, Air, Bulk)
2. Shipping (Export/Import custom clearance, Registration to the government)
3. Transportation (Trailer and Truck)
4. Packing(Carton and Crate)
5. Storage(Warehouse: General, DG, Cold, Bonded)
6. Installation & Uninstallation (for heavy and big machines)
7. Cross Boarder Truck

Forwarders do not have the facilities such as Vessel, Airplane, Warehouse, Truck, Trailer, Packing Material and Heavy Vehicle. However We (Forwarder) can propose all these logistics to the customers by the total logistics arrangement.

Customers feel very easy since they do not need to find these suppliers by themselves. Just ask the sales of the Forwarder.

Summery

Forwarder does not have facilities but has “Information” relating to Logistics. We, as a Professional Forwarder, we can propose and arrange any type of Logistics for customers because of the Logistics Information Management.

The market is always changing. The Regulation, the players of the Carrier, Competitors and so on. The more information we have, the more proposal we can provide to the customers, which is the necessary company/person in the market.

Our company, HPS Trade Co.,Ltd is one the the Logistics companies to manage Logistics information very well to the customers. If you are interested in, please check our website.