Start Your Own Freight Forwarding Business

Hello everyone, it's Alan again here from abts Training Services London, England. I did a YouTube topic a while back about what a

freight

forwarder does now for some reason, which I love. For some reason, it generated a lot of things. of interest and I

start

ed receiving calls and emails, etc. Wow, that was good, how can I become a

freight

forwarder? So I thought well. Well, I'm going to do just a little presentation on how to become a freight forwarder and I'm sure anyone who's interested. Nice to see this uh I'm not going to go into chapter and verse because everyone will fall asleep after about five minutes so I'm hitting the sweet spots so to speak keep in mind if you're watching this.

I'm in the UK so I speak from a UK perspective which is obvious and I'm sure you'll appreciate it so no matter where in the world you are and you're looking at me now please keep in mind around 90% of what I say. is relevant to you, there will be some cases, uh, that I will highlight, that are just relevant to the UK, okay, so here we go on this very, very cold spring day in London, rubbing my hands here off screen to keep me warm, okay, here we are. Wow, the first thing you need to do is decide

your

mode of

business

.

Will you become self-employed? Alan Bracken will trade as fast charging, for example, or he will become a fast charging limited company. Now it is not the province of this chat to tell you what to do, so the answer is obviously that you consult an accountant and he will tell you the best

business

plan for you, okay, so we eliminate that, the legal aspect, now the tools of

your

business. to give it a name, the basic tools that you can't even get out of bed in the morning to become a freight forwarder if you don't have these tools of the trade because now it doesn't make sense what I What I mean by the tools of the trade Craft is where you get your knowledge from on a day-to-day basis.

Let me give you an example. I contact you and say, could you give me a shipping quote for a 20ft Container of um, I can't think of that, it's amazing, isn't it okay? All the ports in the world and I can't think of an absolutely amazing board, um, from Mombasa in Kenya to Felixstowe in the UK, that's the phone call and now I'm a freight forwarder, I can't just babble and mutter about it. I have to know where I find this information and what my source is, so in the UK we go to what I call the carrier's bible. and I go to a book published every Monday by subscription called Lloyd's Loading List.

I think it's been around for 18 years and I

start

ed using it as a freight forwarder back in the 80's. What does it do well? It tells you in a weekly subscription in an a to z format, it tells you all the ports in the world that are served from ports, in my case in England, so I look for Felix Doe, I cross and find the port of Mombasa unloading, whatever it is, and I contact them so that their The first basic tool of the trade if you are in England is to subscribe to Lloyd's loading list.

Now, for those of you outside the UK, there are many similar posts, but you would go to the internet and access the ship sailing from Felixstowe to Mombasa. However, about the Felix ambassador and bam, they appear, so let's say the tools of your trade are Lloyd's loading list or the internet, okay, it's up to you, if you're talking about the UK, someone He calls and says, uh, me. I want to send some products from the UK to Türkiye by truck. What documents do I need now? You can't just turn around and say I don't know you were a freight forwarder.

You have to be able to say yes, you need the following documents and you have to give a precise answer, how do you know how do you know in the UK what documents do customs need in Izmir in Turkey? I remember informing Izmir in Turkey What documents do you need for a shipment to Benghazi in Libya what documents do you know we come here all day I will only do one more what documents do you need to send goods to Saint Petersburg Russia okay you don't know I know a book that does you know in our case we have another help and it's called crown reference book for exporters crown reference book for exporters and it tells every country in the world what documents that country needs when you send goods to that country brilliant, absolutely brilliant, by the way , I don't get a commission from Lloyds and certainly not from crowns, so although I would talk about them in the UK, they are just good, they are fine, so now you are not in the UK and someone calls you and asks for your paperwork what's up.

There are so many websites that you can access nowadays. It's magical, but you have to be in a position to know where to get this information. You can't tell someone who wants a 24 hour quote for Izmir and Turkey, a 20ft container quote. from Israel from the UK to Izmir and Turkey you can't say yes wait I'll get back to you in an hour you lose the business. Instant information is the key in freight transportation if you mumble and babble and say "well, me." You will be back in an hour, sometimes you have to wait an hour, but you have to explain to your client why they have to wait an hour to get that information, so that the basic tools of your Lloyds and Crown trading in the UK were from the UK Internet, but you also have to know what to look for, so your basic tools and as I say, this is just a fundamental thing, the fundamentals of freight

forwarding

, how to become one, so you have to have the basic tools.

Well, now you have it. to have a clear understanding of the documentation and the procedures, what if you have a call that I used to receive many, many times, um alan i i uh, I just received a letter of credit here from my client in Libya and uh have a clue of who are looking for bills of lading, certificates of origin, I can give you an invoice and a packing list, but to be honest, I don't know anything about letters of credit as a freight forwarder, you have to be able to say no problem, I can handle that letter of credit for you, so you should know about letters of credit, among many other things, you should know about credit lenses.

Okay, you can say you have a lead and hang up the phone. and you lose the business, so I'm just giving you a rough idea of ​​the knowledge you need. You need intimate knowledge of the documentation. Okay, in my case, I look down at cronus and it says, um, for Saudi Arabia you need the richest Arab certificate of origin. legalized and certified and I passed it on to my client and he said wow, you're a smart guy Alan, what does it mean and if I go, I don't know, I'm just reading it on cronus, it's the kiss of death.

I have lost business, so you have to know not only about the documentation, but also how it works. Bills of lading. You have to know them inside out. The other way around. How to create a bill of lading. How to deliver instructions on the bill of lading. I don't want to discourage anyone and I certainly don't want you to click right now and say this sounds too much like hard work. Yes, I have been objective. Please take it or leave it, so you have to have a clear idea. understanding the documentation and the nitty-gritty, you need to understand how inca terms 2020 work, I mean these are just the basics, just the basics, if you're not doing this, forget it, you need to know everything about how to tell the ways apart respiratory. invoices house airfreight invoices master airfreight invoices and now we come to the most important thing: you must know the freight rates.

Now think about it, you are the middleman between the exporter and the shipper, whether it is an airline, shipping line or trucking company. A typical scenario would be that you contact the relevant shipping line, request exports to wherever you are, let's export from Mombasa to the Kenyan ambassador, they answer the phone, we are making a telephone purchase through Steam right now and the answering machine telephone and they say it's fcl or lcl lcl okay, then they'll give you their price for the shortfall and they say a carrier, yes, I'm a carrier, a carrier, okay and we give you a carrier discount for so much, uh, you must Say okay, I need a quote for an LCL and they say it's 59 weight measurements, that's all, 59 weight measurements.

Now you should have the knowledge to convert that rather small formula of 59 weight measurements into an actual rate that you can't tell. the shipping line, can you figure that out for me please, and they'll say, oh, go walk, you're a freight forwarder, for God's sake, that's one of the skills of your trade that's part of your bag of knowledge, go away, don't bother me. Now you might find someone who will tell you: yes, I will do it once for you, but never again. Okay, so you need to know the intimacy of shipping properly, so when you've gotten over that and you've looked at yourself.

You have registered your business, you have the tools of your trade through the publications I mentioned, they are the Internet. So, as I say, you need a clear understanding of the documentation of the load races, it is displayed on the screen and now we move on to external providers. When I started my freight

forwarding

business, I literally started in a very, very small chicken coop office, which was all I could afford to rent. I certainly didn't have storage, I certainly didn't have transportation and I certainly didn't have the computer means to perform customs records three basics of a freight forwarder box of tricks to speak well working from a very, very, very small office in London, England , I had the knowledge but I didn't have those plugins, so what did I do?

I requested help from third parties, external providers. I've seen this many times over the years, where people start a freight forwarding business and they rent a warehouse, they rent a truck. I think it's a vanity they like to see. name about the warehouse they like to see the truck going around with joe blogs freight transport on the side we deliver anything to any place you know um and a nominal customer leg for this dresser. I have never taken that path. I go to external suppliers to transport companies. I went to shipping companies and signed a contract with that shipping company to have them do all my transportation or transport for me.

I went to warehouse owners and rented there in those days. In my case, now in my case, because I had a lot of business for the trucking company, they actually converted one of their trucks with panels with my company's name on it, which was really good free publicity, okay? I had a trucking company, I had a warehouse company that I pay as I go, so I never had a big financial commitment, so I would highly recommend that you set up a freight phone business and use third parties now, without No matter where you live, there must be a customs entry. made for exports, you have to tell your country your customs.

Hey, I'm exporting this and this is what I'm exporting, so they use it for the balance of payments. This country exported a lot but it imports a lot and that's the balance of payments okay so you have to tell them and in the UK that's done in a computerized system called boss at the moment which is very very very expensive to bring internally so that I can make entries about the boss, very expensive. I never used Chief. I asked the airline's shipping line to do my check-in for me and they will charge me so much that the third party suppliers you use on an ad hoc basis and you don't have a big financial commitment.

I found it very very effective, uh, when I was in business, okay, you need skills, you need presentation skills, you need negotiation skills, you have to negotiate not only with your client but also with the shipping lines, the airlines and the companies. of transportation, so you have to hone your negotiation skills, you have to have presentation skills when you walk into a company and you've been asked, yeah, come in, Helen, visit us and tell us what you do, you have to have presentation skills, you can't just sit there. and we make containers and then no, you have to make a professional presentation, so these are skills that you need, that you hone, that you learn, the most important thing in any aspect of the business, but since we are talking about freight transportation, it is very important when you are in transportation. shipping business is okay so I haven't really gone into much detail on how to become a freight forwarder but all I can tell you is this if you're still interested if you haven't fallen asleep listening to me if you're still interested we can offer you a consultancy, we can talk to you so you don't make mistakes, keep in mind we are being as we say in the UK.

I've been around the block several times and I always say and am. very honest, I've made every mistake you can make, so I bring into my life now, in my old age, I bring a little bit of wisdom and, um, I can, I can tell you how not to work as a freight forwarder, okay, we can too . YouWe offer two courses, one is our online import and export course and the other is our letter of credit course. Now I could throw my hands up to the sky and say, "Oh yes, all he's doing is making his courses, yes, to a certain extent, I am." But I am very honest and tell him not to try to become a freight forwarder without the basic knowledge we just discussed.

Abts Training Services is not the only training company in England or the world. I recognize that I am not saying that you should. join my course, I would love to have you, I would love to help you in your career, but what I am saying, believe it or not, is that it doesn't matter who you use, for the love of God, make sure that training company has guys and older girls like me who know what they are talking about who will give you genuine information based on years of experience go to them if you think they are good so it's not just a sales spiel here.you come to abts logistics I would welcome you I would love to see you I would love to help you start your toll free phone company but for the love of God get training and the basic training you need is like our import and export course and letters of credit of course we cover everything we cover everything on that most things not everything most things so we are here for a consultancy if you need it we can offer you online courses with support where you can contact me personally chat with me and I can tell you where you are going right or where you are going wrong it is up to you , just a matter of interest, if you look at the link at the end of this short video, you'll see the transcript link below, can you? can i click on a copy of uh lloyd's loading list okay i'm going to say goodbye to you and hope to see you again soon um that was a quick gallop to start a freight shipping business now i'd be pretty dumb to my part.

I mean, go out and set the world on fire with the little knowledge you got from Alex, no, it's food for thought, it's just the basics you need to know if you really want to get stuck into freight transport, which by the way is a very gratifying it gave me the opportunity to travel around the world some places were horrible and unpleasant ports at two in the morning where I was very scared but it gave me the opportunity to meet wonderful people it gave me an opportunity to improve my knowledge about international trade and at the same time at the same time earn a decent living, which at the end of the day is the name of the game, isn't it?

We are not a charity organization as a freight forwarder. Okay, I won't delay. If you want more help on freight forwarding, how to start a freight forwarding business, more details about it, or if you want to sign up for the courses you need. It will improve your knowledge about freight transportation and for those of you who really want to become a transporter, I'm just saying go for it, it's a wonderful career, it's an interesting career, no two days are the same if you like trouble, start solve them, become a transporter. transporter um if you want to have a nice quiet life become an accountant okay take care of yourself bye okay Marcus.