What is a Freight Broker and Freight Forwarder?

[ATeam]

Expediters are part of the larger trucking and logistics industries. Terms like freight broker and freight forwarder are often heard by expediters but not easily grasped by those who have not gone to the trouble of studying such topics.

I stumbled across a web site this morning that is refreshingly clear in explaining freight broker and freight forwarder. See also: customs broker

This appears to be a site running a Google AdWords strategy. Many of the links will take you to advertisers so watch for that. Nevertheless, the basic definitions may be helpful to some so I thought I'd share links to them here.

 

[greg334]

Thanks Phil, but the customs' broker thing is a little off base.

There are no prescribed educational requirements to become a customs broker.

Actually there is sort of, the eduation requirement has to do with the certiifcation process and the test itself. Although it is an long test it is not hard to do and you really need to be educated in more than just classifying products for collection of tariffs and fees. If I remember right there is also a period of work requirement that has to be met in order to become a licensed broker.

Having a degree augments the certificate and allows one to go into other aspects of government paperwork processing but it does not always mean that it will give you a step up unless you are moving up in a management position in a house or starting your own brokerage house.

The other part is that may be a problem and mis-information is A successful customs broker can sometimes negotiate extensions for the clearance of goods until the proper documentation is obtained.

This happens not too often and in our case I think never. The problem in our case is many times a company who does not often ship cross border, may not have the latitude to have a broker create a solution for them to get the goods across the border. One that ships often and uses the same firm may have an advantage by having the broker cover the load, ensuring the tariff and fees are collected and the load is classified as close as possible while going back and dealing with supplemental paper work to revise the shipment.

Negotiation?

I would say no.

Solution?

Yes.

 

[bbrs2000]

Freight Brokerage is a Growing Transportation Field
As of this writing, there are over 14,000 licensed transportation brokers in the United States of which only 50% are operating in a full time manner. Freight Brokers accounted for over 10%, around $60 billion, in revenues from the Transportation Industry. In a recent article, the Wall Street Journal reported "transportation brokerage, and logistics" as the fastest growing segment of the transportation industry.

How to become a freight broker? Freight Broker training,freight broker school

 

[Camper]

A freight forwarder is essentially a virtual funnel in which individual LTL loads bound for the same destination get consolidated onto one airway bill and onto the same flight or whatever other means of transport(rail or ship).