What are the major difficulties of International Freight Transport?

The International Freight Transport (IFT) industry is a major pillar of today’s consumer society. You only need to look at the exponential growth of e-commerce to understand this reality. In fact, it is the logistics resources of this industry that allow companies to ship their packages to their end customers. Nowadays, more than ever, the International Freight Transport activity must be streamlined, performing and reactive in order to deal with the difficulties that are emerging. What difficulties are we talking about? This article presents three of them.

Special precautions to be taken when transporting goods

Shipping goods internationally is not a simple job. Actually, to succeed in such trade, each and every company has to be very careful with the goods being shipped. Some cargoes require special treatment or specific precautions. If not, they will not be able to withstand the journey and end up being damaged.

This is true, for example, for perishable or the so-called dangerous goods. In some cases, it is necessary to ensure that the cargo is not stored in the same compartment as other products. Logistics coordinators also need to provide adequate packaging and protective equipment to safeguard such goods. This planning actually takes a lot of time.

The preservation of goods is extremely important in International Freight Transport. If the cargo is damaged, the carrier will be held responsible and will have to deal with the consequences. In some cases, the customer may be entitled to millions of Euros in repair costs. To avoid this outcome, it is important to overcome the difficulties associated with the nature of the shipment.

Compliance with regulatory requirements of international freight transport

The second major difficulty in International Freight Transport is the regulatory constraints that govern the activity. Before shipping cargo from one country to another, the company must consider the regulatory framework of those countries and ensure that it meets all the required conditions. However, it’s not that simple!

The legal framework varies greatly from one country to another. Some countries are much more rigorous than others. They may require specific certificates, customs declarations or licenses to trade. The International Transport company must study each specific requirement and comply with them. Otherwise, it will not be allowed to trade internationally with that country.

The constraints imposed by each country make international trade extremely complex. They make the job more complicated for companies operating in International Freight Transport.

Geographical difficulties

Some areas of the world are difficult to reach. This is often due to weather conditions or the remote location of these areas. Therefore, a shipment to such areas can become a real headache. The company’s logistics coordinators will have to think about the most appropriate way of transporting the goods. They also have to take into account that the shipment will take much longer than expected.

All in all, International Freight Transport faces three major challenges. These are: the special precautions that must be taken to transport the goods, the compliance with the legal requirements and finally the geographical difficulties involved in the process. To face these challenges, logistics coordinators can offer solutions tailored to the nature of the shipments that need to be handled.