How to carry out price comparisons for air freight, sea freight and rail freight

A shipper can be a manufacturer, a trading, importing or exporting company of a good or a consignment. The shipper orders and pays the logistics service provider. Terms also used are, for example, shipper, exporter or importer. They rely on transport offers and have to obtain and compare them from their logistics partners. So you are dependent on price comparisons for air freight and ocean freight. You also have to calculate specific shipping costs from the offers.

In many manufacturing or trading companies, the procurement of transport services is carried out by inbound or outbound logistics departments. This process is often called transport purchasing or freight forwarding price comparison. Larger companies often maintain their own logistics departments, which consist of one to five experts and bundle these activities. Smaller companies often do not have the necessary logistics knowledge and have integrated transport purchasing into their line functions, e.g. purchasing or export departments.

Companies want to have / keep control over their transport activities, on the one hand to ensure a functioning supply chain and on the other hand to be able to monitor shipping costs. They rely on direct, personal contact with logistics service providers and need a strong and trusting relationship with them.

The outsourcing of transport procurement weakens the relationship between the company and the logistics service provider. For example, the integration of platforms or freight consultants in air freight and ocean freight price comparison is an intervention in the relationship between companies and logistics service providers. As a result, companies lose control of their supply chain, complexity increases and dependencies are created.

In order to be able to choose to work with a logistics service provider, shippers need transport offers about the transport costs incurred. Long-term price agreements are mainly negotiated by senders with a high number of shipments per year. Small businesses are more likely to request ocean and air freight costs for individual shipments from logistics service providers.

Basically, companies want to improve the efficiency of transport procurement while at the same time wanting to maintain a high degree of autonomy and independence from external partners. If possible, this should be done in conjunction with forwarding costs that are in line with the market.

Manufacturing companies and trading companies buy and sell goods in global markets and are dependent on air and sea freight transports. The purchase of associated transport services is associated with high procedural effort. For approx. 70% of the companies, the procurement of transport services, the price comparison and the calculation of ocean freight and air freight costs are still not digitized.

This means that companies have to conduct complex, individual communication (fax, email, telephone) with each individual logistics service provider, manually collect information and maintain Excel templates. In addition, the offers received are often incomplete, the positions of the offers are difficult to compare (number, description, content) and the methods of calculating sea freight and air freight costs differ.

 

The other approx. 30% of the companies already use services from, for example, tender platforms or freight tenderers for air freight and ocean freight price comparisons. However, this process is non-transparent and complex to prepare. The services are also expensive and the actual savings are not clear. In addition, their efforts put a strain on the personal relationship between companies and logistics service providers and also mean a loss of control over the supply chain. Another hurdle is that only registered logistics service providers are available and that freight forwarding costs cannot always be calculated and compared meaningfully.