In our last blog we have discussed the elements of the freight quote. Today we will move forward. Assume the quote is accepted and load is tendered to the shipping agent. What happens next?
I would split air shipping in three main stages:
1. Before arrival at origin airport
2. Between origin and destination airports
3. After arrival at destination airport
Nevertheless type of goods – flippable bars or live elephant the first thing the forwarder does, after your confirmation call is a routing plan. This plan includes
• How and when to arrange pick-up
• What paperwork is needed
• Which airline shall be used
• Booking with the airline
• Organizing of the destination service
• Scheduling all of the above
Though the steps seem equal the details make the whole difference.
We can schedule pick-up of our two flippable bars easily with consolidation service or with a dedicated loading depending only on the urgency of their shipping. From the other side planning for movement of the elephant includes always special transportation from its cage in the circus to the airport. And this transportation should respond to very specific requirements taking into consideration such factors as type of the elephant, its size and weight, its training and acclimatization, length of travel, drainage for the urine and I am sure thousand of other factors.
Paperwork needed for our bars is only one commercial invoice and eventually a packing list but for the elephant we need a whole War and Peace trilogy of paper in order to be able to move our friend to fly to the place of its performance.
Booking an airline for the bars will take only two considerations – does the carrier operate to the country where we want our bars delivered and what is the price. Elephant shipping requires that we firstly find an airline which is specialized in transportation of live animals and not every airline does this. And this airline might not be near us. Imagine the elephant is in Sofia, Bulgaria and this airline can move from Frankfurt only. Than the pick-up becomes very complex issue which should take into consideration many factors including crossing several countries with differences in their regulations for transport of live animals.
Organizing of destination service means that someone should meet your load in the destination and arrange all of the formalities as well as physical delivery of the goods to the final destination. In any way the origin forwarder should previously know what the destination organization will be. Is it the consignee who will take care for destination airport processing or it will be another forwarder who will be operating on behalf of the consignee. And if for the flippable bars it can be decided on the move the destination organization for the elephant should be put in place well in advance before elephants departure from the origin.
And at the end – all of the above tasks – no matter it is about movement of nice logo printed flippable bars or a live elephant in order to have perfect service – we need to have perfect timing of performance of the above procedures. And perfect timing actually makes the difference.
If you care how your loads will move, no matter what is the commodity , please do not hesitate to contact us.