The article discusses an obvious yet fundamental principle in the work of a freight forwarder, which is the guarantee of delivery reliability. It would seem that the responsibility for meeting the delivery guarantee and the consequences associated with failing to do so rest primarily with the freight forwarder. However, as practice shows, the guarantee of delivery reliability takes on various, specific forms.
The main freight forwarder plays a very important role in the logistics chain, as, being the manager of the transport process, they are responsible to their principal (client) for the entire course of the commissioned process and for the selected freight forwarders-subcontractors participating in the process. It is obvious that freight forwarders-subcontractors also guarantee the reliability of delivery to the main freight forwarder within the time limit specified in the transport order, because in the case of the main freight forwarder commissioning the transport of cargo to a subcontractor, they are treated as a principal (client). However, it is the main freight forwarder who monitors the route of a given cargo and – while maintaining the guarantee of delivery reliability and at the same time ensuring effective customer service – provides the client with a report (in various forms, electronic or telephone) on the timeliness of delivery established in the transport order, informing them of the location of the transported cargo at any given moment.
In her professional career as a freight forwarder, the author has tracked hundreds of such routes and – despite diligent efforts and adherence to the Just-in-Time strategy – maintaining this guarantee of timeliness is not so simple and obvious. There are unforeseen random events, and when transporting cargo to the East, there are also customs clearances that are difficult to determine in terms of time.
The problem of the timeliness of export deliveries is reflected in the same way in the timeliness of import cargo collections. Contractual penalties for late delivery and collection of cargo must be determined when the transport order is signed by the freight forwarder. This is a fundamental matter for them, because they cannot make the principal feel that a mistake, such as not including customs clearance in the delivery time, is a pretext to prove that the assumed time was met.
A separate issue is shipments for a so-called special price. These occur when, for example, when loading a standard set with a length of 13.6 m and a load capacity of 24 tons, it turns out that the client has prepared 30 pallet spaces of goods. We therefore have 3 free pallet spaces, and our second client has exactly these additional 3 pallets of cargo to transport and unload on the way to our first (main principal). If, of course, our main principal agrees to the additional cargo, then for that special price (freight) that we can offer our second principal, we determine that the cargo will be delivered to the unloading point only after the cargo of our main principal has been unloaded. However, we do not give our second principal an exact delivery date for the cargo, but only an estimated one, the earliest possible after the unloading date of the shipment specified in the transport order of our main principal.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 1/2010.