Freight Industry – A Boon to Manufacturers, Businesses and Individuals
To make you digest my title, I’ve broken down the freight industry and its fundamental terminologies in this article. Freight, also known as bulk goods and cargo, is needed inevitably in our day to day lives, no matter what domain you belong to. Whether it is a pallet of books or a stock of fruits, it has to reach somewhere. Freight doesn’t only represent the goods that are sent by trucks partially; the word involves air carrier, container, rail freight, boat freight and much more.
Freight is usually handled by two parties on a commercial basis. Freight is predestined for a specific customer, who could be a person or a company. No matter what is being transported and when, there is always a shipper and a receiver, who is also known as the consignee. However, sometimes the freight will pass through two persons to reach to its destined receive: a shipper and a third party. The third party entity is commercially known as a freight forwarder or freight broker. Remember, a forwarder and broker can be a company or a person.
A freight brokerage company acts as a mediator entity that store and supply the stock from the shipper to consignee. The brokerage agent asks the shipper to provide them with trucks or other means of transportations to handle the freight. The broker and the shipper together decide a rate for each load they handle. Or in some cases, the shipper has fixed the commission for brokerage agents.
Freight forwarding company or a freight forwarder is another fundamental concept in the freight industry. A freight forwarding company functions same as the freight brokerage agent or broker, however this terminology is mainly used for international shipments. The Freight forwarding companies handle the cargos that need to get shifted overseas; it is these firms who deal with the border crossing process and prepare all documents needed for this international shipment.
There are cases when a brokerage agent and a freight forwarder work together to accomplish the load shifting job. However, the customers need to be more careful in such cases as double brokering can create a serious threat against liability and could result in a higher load transfer rate. The freight industry has 3PL companies that handle everything a freight forwarding company and a broker do, ranging from warehousing, container, cold storage and air freight to rail.
Most of the trucking companies, or a freight company, relies supremely on the brokers and thus the ads with title “Freight Brokerage Agents Wanted” have gone viral over the internet and in the print media. A freight company acts as a mediator and takes up the task of handling all the details of cargo transport between a shipper and a carrier. A well-established freight company can’t just help you ship the load, but it can also help you find a reliable carrier and assure you for safe transport.
The freight industry is growing fast. Every day millions of shipments are transported from one continent to another, one country to another and so on. Do you have something to send or receive via a freight company?
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