How to compare prices for air freight, sea freight and rail freight

A consignor can be a manufacturer, a trading company, an importer or an exporter of a good or a shipment. The consignor commissions and pays the logistics service provider. Terms that are also used include shipper, exporter or importer. You are dependent on transport offers and must obtain and compare them from your logistics partners. You are therefore dependent on price comparisons for air freight and sea freight. You must also 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 also called transport purchasing or freight forwarding price comparison. Larger companies often have their own logistics departments for this purpose, 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 department.

Companies want to have/retain control over their transport activities in order to ensure a functioning supply chain on the one hand and to be able to monitor shipping costs on the other. To do this, they rely on direct, personal contact with logistics service providers and need strong and trusting relationships with them.

Outsourcing transport procurement weakens the relationship between companies and logistics service providers. For example, the involvement of platforms or freight consultants in air freight and sea freight price comparisons is an intervention in the relationship between companies and logistics service providers. As a result, companies lose control over their supply chain, complexity increases and dependencies are created.

In order to decide to work with a logistics service provider, shippers need transport quotes for the resulting transport costs. Long-term price agreements are mainly negotiated by shippers with a high number of shipments per year. Small companies often ask logistics service providers for sea freight and air freight costs for individual shipments.

Basically, companies want to improve the efficiency of transport procurement while at the same time maintaining a high level of autonomy and independence from external partners. If possible, this should be done in conjunction with market-compliant freight forwarding costs.

Manufacturing companies and trading companies buy and sell goods on global markets and rely on air and sea freight transport. Purchasing the associated transport services involves a high level of process effort. For around 70% of companies, the procurement of transport services, price comparison and calculation of sea freight and air freight costs are still not digitalized.

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 offer items are difficult to compare (number, description, content) and the methods of calculating sea freight and air freight costs are different.

The other 30% or so of companies already use services from tender platforms or freight tenderers to compare air freight and sea freight prices. However, this process is not transparent and requires a lot of preparation. The services are also expensive and the actual savings are not clear. In addition, their use puts a strain on the personal relationship between companies and logistics service providers and also means a loss of control over the supply chain. Another hurdle is that only registered logistics service providers are available and freight costs cannot always be calculated and compared in a meaningful way.