Freight transport, also referred as ''Freight Forwarding'', is the physical process of transporting

commodities In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a comm ...

and

merchandise Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to displaying products that are for sale in a creative way that entices customers to purchase more i ...

goods and cargo. The term shipping originally referred to transport by sea but in

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...

, it has been extended to refer to transport by land or air (International English: "carriage") as well. " Logistics", a term borrowed from the military environment, is also used in the same sense.

Modes of shipment

Freight goods according to mode of transportation 2010

In 2015, 108 trillion

tonne-kilometer The units of measurement in transportation describes the unit of measurement used to express various transportation quantities, as used in statistics, planning, and their related applications. Transportation quantity The currently popular units ...

s were transported worldwide (anticipated to grow by 3.4% per year until 2050 (128 Trillion in 2020)): 70% by sea, 18% by road, 9% by rail, 2% by inland waterways and less than 0.25% by air.

Grounds

Land or "ground" shipping can be made by train or by truck (British English: lorry). In air and sea shipments, ground transport is required to take the cargo from its place of origin to the airport or seaport and then to its destination because it is not always possible to establish a production facility near ports due to the limited coastlines of countries. Ground transport is typically more affordable than air, but more expensive than sea, especially in developing countries, where inland

infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...

may not be efficient.

Ship

Much freight transport is done by

cargo ship A cargo ship or freighter is a merchant ship that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year, handling the bulk of international trade. Cargo ships are usu ...

s. An individual nation's fleet and the people that crew it are referred to as its merchant navy or merchant marine. According to a 2018 report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), merchant shipping (or seaborne trade) carries 80-90% of international trade and 60-70% by value. On rivers and canals, barges are often used to carry bulk cargo.

Air

Cargo is transported by air in specialized cargo aircraft and in the luggage compartments of passenger aircraft. Air freight is typically the fastest mode for long-distance freight transport but it is also the most expensive.

Multimodal

Cargo is shipped under a single contract but performed using at least two different modes of transport (e.g. ground and air). Cargo may not be containerized. Cargo is exchanged between different modes of transportation via transport hubs also known as transport interchanges or

nodes In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a Vertex (graph theory), vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics *Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph *Vertex (geometry), a point where two ...

(e.g. train stations, airports, etc.).

Intermodal

Multimodal transport featuring containerized cargo (or intermodal container) that is easily transferred between ship, rail, plane and truck. For example, a shipper works together with both ground and air transportation to ship an item overseas. Intermodal freight transport is used to plan the route and carry out the shipping service from the manufacturer to the door of the recipient.

Terms of shipment

The Incoterms (or International Commercial Terms) published by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) are accepted by governments, legal authorities, and practitioners worldwide for the interpretation of the most commonly used terms in international trade. Common terms include: * Free on Board (FOB) *

Cost and Freight The Incoterms or International Commercial Terms are a series of pre-defined commercial terms published by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) relating to international commercial law. Incoterms define the responsiblities of exporters and ...

(CFR, C&F, CNF) * Cost, Insurance & Freight (CIF) The term "best way" generally implies that the shipper will choose the carrier who offers the lowest rate (to the shipper) for the shipment. In some cases, however, other factors, such as better insurance or faster transit time will cause the shipper to choose an option other than the lowest bidder.

Door-to-door shipping

Door-to-door (DTD or D2D) shipping refers to domestic or international shipment of cargo from the point of origin (POI) to the destination while generally remaining on the same piece of equipment and avoiding multiple transactions, transloading, and cross-docking without interim storage. International DTD is a service provided by many international shipping companies and may feature intermodal freight transport using

containerized cargo Containerization is a system of intermodal freight transport using intermodal containers (also called shipping containers and International Organization for Standardization, ISO containers). Containerization is also referred as "Container St ...

. The quoted price of this service includes all shipping, handling, import and customs duties, making it a hassle-free option for customers to import goods from one jurisdiction to another. This is compared to standard shipping, the price of which typically includes only the expenses incurred by the shipping company in transferring the object from one place to another.

Customs Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting tariffs and for controlling the flow of goods, including animals, transports, personal effects, and hazardous items, into and out of a country. Traditionally, customs ...

fees, import taxes and other tariffs may contribute substantially to this base price before the item ever arrives.

References

Citations

* *

External links

* Schreiber, Zv
2016: The Year Freight Goes Online
December 2015 * Humplik, Carme
Winds of change in freight transportation supply chain: Platooning technology
July 2017 * Bloomberg.co
First Cryptocurrency Freight Deal Takes Russian Wheat to Turkey
January 2018 {{Authority control Economic globalization Intermodal containers Merchant navy