The difference between a shipping company and a freight forwarder

Do I need a Shipping Company or a Freight Forwarder?

It’s really common to see people confused about the concept of freight forwarders and Shipping companies, especially if you never had to deal with international logistics before.

Freight Forwarders and Shipping Companies are two very important parts of global logistics but they are not in charge of the same tasks, so let’s see the real difference:

Freight Forwarder: Is a person or company that acts on behalf of either the seller or buyer (the person or company that wants to move something from one country to another). The Freight Forwarder can arrange every detail of the transportation process (packing, warehousing, distribution, insurance and much more), but he don’t perform the transportation.

Shipping Company: We can say that the Shipping Company is the one who owns the ship, is the responsible for taking the cargo from one port to another.

In other words, we can say that the Freight Forwarder takes care of everything before and after the cargo moving and the Shipping Company has the responsibility of moving the cargo.

If you want to know more details about Freight Forwarders, Shipping Companies or anything logistics related, get in touch with our specialized team.