Freight forwarders provide shipping solutions to individuals, commercial companies, businessmen exporters and importers who need to send containers, crates, and packages from one nation to another.
While the transport of goods for individual customers is often handled by courier and postal services, freight forwarders usually manage the movement of goods by the bulk. This is also known as freight or cargo.
They act on behalf of exporters and importers in the delivery of their clients’ goods to their destination in great condition and in a timely manner. This involves booking cargo with airlines, ocean lines, road or rail carriers. Some shipping agents have their own road transport and actually move merchandise themselves.
Other duties of forwarders include arranging insurance, preparing and checking bills for shipping, arranging warehousing, and making sure the lowest possible custom fees are precise.
The guide below shows how trading insurance and conditions are used to minimize the financial risk for freight forwarders.
Limiting Liability and Trading Conditions for Freight Forwarders
All business enterprises are subject to a vast range of legal rules and policies, such as health and safety, employment law, accounting standards, and public liability. Also, there are legal issues that particularly affect forwarders as well as their customers.
The role of international freight forwarders is to make some arrangements that allow for the movement of goods from the seller to the purchaser. This process usually involves a journey of a couple thousand miles using one or more mode of transportation.
Before one needs their services, there should be a sale-and-contact agreement between a seller and a purchaser for the supply of a certain merchandise. A lot of the aspects of this contract directly affect the detail and nature of the contract eventually agreed between the client (which could be the buyer or seller of goods) and the forwarder.
Trading Conditions
To make sure the client and the forwarder completely comprehend, and agree upon their duties and responsibilities in the process of shipment, the client should be aware of the trading conditions of the freight forwarder. This has to be done before the contract details are agreed. This is during the quotation stage, ideally.
Trading conditions are the determining factors for how any service is provided and often include minimizing the liability for a forwarder in case a claim is filed against them. If this is not done, the freight forwarder could be left with unlimited liability, which can be very time consuming, stressful, and costly.
