Navigating tariffs: 'like trying to solve a Rubik's cube while colour-blind'
Logistics providers tasked with ‘providing clarity’ to customers have a near-impossible task when they themselves ...
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The freight industry should embrace online pricing to create more efficiencies – while shippers also need to get used to transparency in their supply chains.
At last week’s TOC Middle East, Lars Jensen, CEO of SeaIntelligence, said online forwarders “tend to aggravate traditional forwarders and shipping lines”.
he added: “Online forwarders create transparency, but carriers and forwarders believe it’s a race to the bottom. But the industry has been very good at doing that all by itself. They are just showing the ...
Comment on this article
John Roberts
December 16, 2016 at 3:15 pmbecause the freight industry has been used to negotiating rates for years, nobody believes than an online price is the best price attainable. People like to think they are getting their own special spot price or contract rate which they do by phoning or emailing rather than just settling for an online tariff rate. One day it will all be online but I think the uptake will be very very slow.
The future for this is interesting. Companies like Flexport may dominate this in years to come but its hard to see how they can with far less volume than traditional forwarders. Or they will disappear as the established forwarders simply improve their online offering.
Only time will tell.