International Freight Shipping is services used by companies to export or import of products internationally which requires an extra care and scrutiny as compared to the products or goods transferred interstate or intrastate. It requires a bit more planning that your parcel will be delivered safely and on time at the required destination. They have professionals that will take care of your parcel being delivered safely and on time. They take care of the route the parcel goes, the customs the parcel need to pass, keeping the user away from all the worries.
International Freight Shipping companies have services called as “freight forwarding” which act as an intermediary between the client and transportation services.The freight forwarder or the agent will not move itself instead it will contract with the carrier to facilitate the movement of goods so it basically acts an agent who can move the cargo from dock-to-door. As in transportation of goods internationally involves many carriers and formalities so all these tasks are handled by the freight carrier. The tasks include miscellaneous costs like consular cost, insurance costs, documentation cost, port charges, also various documents export documents, making necessary custom documents etc. So all these tedious tasks are made simpler by the freight forwarder.
While shipping your parcel internationally there are many rules and regulation to be followed, this varies differently from one country to another. It can be different from the origin to the source destination for example a law on the value of the parcel that is being sent can be different. In most of the cases the freight forwarder will help you to abide by these rules and regulation. This is the precise reason for the evolution of the International freight companies in recent times.
A license is required for International Freight Shipping which is issued by the International Freight Transport Association (IFTA) for air transport and the Federal Maritime Commission for ocean shipping.
There are few important documents that one should keep note of while using International Freight shipping. They are as follows:
a) Commercial Invoice: It’s a document that lists all the items you are sending, it can be one or many.It also includes the price of the items being shipped next to the name of the item. One should take care of listing all the items along with its price correctly. There can be certain customs on very high valued products, but these custom duties vary differently as per the rules of the country or region.
b) Certificate of Origin: This document states that from where you parcel actually came i.e. the origin of the parcel.This is very much important to get all the items customs cleared. As the customs agency verifies that your parcel originally came from here.
Several countries also use the Shipper export declaration document, for example it’s mandatory in the US. This document is for a single product whose value is more than $2500, but not for several items summing for $2500.
A good International freight shipping company makes the user aware of the rules and regulation and also gives timely status updates of the current position of the parcel through messages or mails. They also give insurance for any kind of damage or loss to the parcel.So it’s important to choose a service that you can trust and that will take care of your goods.