A new stage in the development of freight transportation is freight forwarding - an activity aimed at protecting cargo from any physical impact, which ensures its safety throughout the entire route.
Professional forwarding companies guarantee the efficiency of work, constant monitoring of cargo along the route of movement and monitoring of its condition.
Stages of transport forwarding
Transport forwarding involves not only door-to-door cargo delivery, but also the whole range of services related to the organization of goods transportation.
The freight forwarder, or freight carrier, organizing transport forwarding, to meet the maximum needs of the client provides the following range of services:
- Selection of transport special equipment in accordance with the features of delivery. At the same time, the dimensions of the product and its characteristics, urgency requirements and other factors are taken into account.
- Drawing up the optimal route. The company's logistics services work out the route in detail, thereby reducing delivery times without increasing its cost.
- Paperwork. The fundamental freight forwarding service, which involves the preparation of all declarations, customs acts, the regulation of issues with the tax service and other issues to ensure the legality of freight.
Thus, transport forwarding allows you to shift the entire responsibility for the transport of goods to the forwarding company. This, in turn, makes it possible to reduce the costs of your company and concentrate your resources on production processes.
Legal basis
The services of the transport expedition are regulated in Chapter 41 of the second part of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. It defines the main provisions related to freight forwarding:
- the rules and the form of registration of the contract, the rules, the implementation of which will ensure proper freight forwarding
- responsibility of the executing company in case of poor performance of obligations;
- information that the client is obliged to provide to the contractor and responsibility associated with the provision of incomplete information about the goods;
- features of the fulfillment of the requirements of the contract by a third party;
- unilateral termination of the contract.
The main provisions of the Civil Code stipulate that the contract must be drawn up in writing, with a description of all issues that may require transportation forwarding.
When the contract is executed by a third party, the shipping company still bears responsibility to the customer. At the same time, the client, for his part, must provide the contractor with all the necessary information about the cargo, and if it turns out that false information was provided, all responsibility for damage to the goods will fall on the customer.
Transport Forwarding Schemes
During the forwarding of goods, the contractor most often resorts to a multimodal cargo delivery scheme, which consists in using different types of transport, but one freight company.
A multimodal delivery scheme is the only one possible when sending goods to another country, as well as to achieve the optimal ratio of price, quality and time. In this case, as a rule, the following schemes are used:
- a combination of railway, shipping and road transport for the transport of goods of large mass;
- the interaction of cars and aircraft with tight delivery times;
- use of vehicles only for intercity traffic.
At the same time, freight forwarding is possible with the involvement of third parties, however, only the general contractor bears all responsibility to the customer.
Business Issues
The code of transport forwarding OKVED 63.40 stands for “Organization of the transportation of goods” and includes various types of activities, without which services for the delivery of goods will be incomplete. But this group does not include courier delivery, as well as insurance of goods during transportation.
Transport forwarding (as a business) is a complex type of activity that will require a company staff consisting of a large number of specialists: lawyers, logisticians, drivers, accountants and other employees. In addition, significant start-up capital is required.