Working With A Freight Forwarding Service To Move Goods
If you have goods to ship, it doesn't matter if you have a partial or full truckload. You need to make sure that the freight is going to get where you need it to and on time. Working with a freight forwarding company to ensure that happens can make things much easier for you.
Freight Forwarding
A freight forwarding company coordinates shipments with carriers willing to move the goods for you. Sometimes a freight forwarding company can arrange the shipment to go from point A to point B with no stops, and other times, they may have to send them on a truck to a warehouse then transfer the goods to another truck for the remainder of the trip.
It is common for freight forwarding companies to work with multiple carriers, and companies typically have so many trucks and freight carriers available to them that transferring the load once or even several times may save time.
If the load has to go with one carrier, the load could sit waiting for the company to be ready to go to the destination your goods need to be in. The forwarder will work to eliminate that situation, but it can take some work to do so.
Partial Loads
One situation that freight forwarding can help with is less-than-load shipments. For small companies or a person shipping a small number of goods, hiring a truck for a partial load can be expensive.
The freight forwarding company can coordinate with freight carriers to find a trailer leaving your area and going to the same general area that your freight needs to. If the load is not full, the carrier will often offer the additional space at a reduced cost, and the freight forwarding company can coordinate getting the freight on the truck for you.
The load will be handled the same way a full trailer would be, but in this case, the driver will need to go to one location to unload your freight and then take the remaining freight to its destination.
Lower Costs
Freight forwarding services can reduce the cost of shipping your goods as well. They work with many carriers so they can find the best price possible for the load. Often, they will put the load information out to several companies to get quotes from them before they confirm the shipment.
The forwarder will often collect estimates from several companies and take the best one for your situation. In some cases, the carriers will bid against each other for the loads, but the carrier that gets the load is not always the cheapest one. Paying a little more for a dependable carrier that the forwarder has worked with in the past might be worth the added cost.
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