Transport forwarding: stages, legal basis, schemes

A new stage in the development of cargo transportation is freight forwarding - an activity aimed at protecting cargo from any physical impact that ensures its safety throughout the journey. Professional freight forwarders guarantee the promptness of work, constant tracking of cargo along the route and monitoring its condition.

Stages of transport forwarding

Transport forwarding involves not only the delivery of goods "door to door", but also the whole range of services associated with the organization of transportation of goods. The freight forwarder or freight forwarder, organizing transport forwarding, provides the following range of services to meet the maximum customer needs:

1. Selection of transport special equipment in accordance with the features of delivery. This takes into account the dimensions of the product and its characteristics, requirements for urgency and other factors.
2. Drawing up the optimal route. The company's logistics services work out the route in detail, thus shortening the delivery time without increasing its cost.
3. Execution of documents. The basic service of forwarding, which involves the preparation of all declarations, customs acts, the regulation of issues with the tax service and the solution of other points to ensure the legality of freight.

Thus, transport forwarding allows you to shift the full 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:

• Rules and form of registration of the contract, the rules, the implementation of which will ensure the 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 the responsibility associated with providing incomplete information about the cargo;
• Peculiarities of the fulfillment of contract requirements by a third party;
• Unilateral cancellation of the contract.

The main provisions of the Civil Code stipulate that the contract must be drafted in writing, with a description of all the issues whose solution may require transport forwarding. When the contract is executed by a third party, the company-forwarder is still liable to the customer. At the same time, the client, for his part, must provide the executor with all the necessary information about the cargo, and if it turns out that the false information was provided, all responsibility for damage to the goods will be borne by the customer.

Freight forwarding schemes

During the expedition of goods, the contractor, most often, resorts to a multimodal scheme for the delivery of goods, which consists in using different types of transport, but for a single freight company. Multimodal delivery scheme is the only possible when sending goods to another country, as well as to achieve the optimal ratio of price, quality and timing. In this case, as a rule, the following schemes are used:

• Combination of railway, shipping and road transport in the transport of goods of large mass;
• The interaction of cars and aviation with compressed delivery times;
• Use only vehicles for long-distance communication.

In this case, freight forwarding is possible with the involvement of third parties, however, only the general contractor bears full responsibility to the customer.

Questions in business

The code of transport expedition OKVED 63.40 is interpreted as "Organization of cargo transportation" and includes various types of activities without which services for the delivery of goods will be incomplete. But this grouping does not include courier delivery, as well as insurance of goods during transportation.

Transport forwarding (as a business) is a complex activity that will require a company staff consisting of a large number of specialists: lawyers, logisticians, drivers, accountants and other employees. In addition, start-up capital of considerable size is required.