What a freight forwarder does.

Seven jobs.

Not all are needed on every shipment, and a buyer with a simple route may want only booking and documents.

1. 01

   Book space

   With a carrier, on a service, for a sailing. Frequency and transhipment are decided here and they matter more than the rate on Indonesian cargo.

2. 02

   Arrange inland movement

   From the producer to the port or the consolidation warehouse. On eastern Indonesian cargo this includes an inter-island leg with its own schedule.

3. 03

   Handle export formalities

   Documentation at origin, terminal handling, and the verified gross mass submission before the cut-off.

4. 04

   Issue transport documents

   A house bill of lading in many cases, which is their own document rather than the carrier's. Worth knowing when a bank is involved.

5. 05

   Consolidate

   Where several suppliers feed one container, somebody has to receive, check and load. Some forwarders do this well and some subcontract it invisibly.

6. 06

   Arrange insurance

   Usually as an agent rather than as an insurer. Read what cover was actually bought rather than assuming all risks.

7. 07

   Coordinate at destination

   Delivery to the port of discharge and, where engaged, clearance and delivery to your door.

Three things they cannot carry.

Your position as importer of record. The customs declaration and the duty are yours whoever files them, and an arrangement where somebody else acts as importer transfers real legal responsibility rather than paperwork.

Your market's import obligations. Food programmes, product safety, registration and packaging obligations sit on the importer, and a forwarder is not equipped to notice you are missing one.

Responsibility for what is in the container. They arrange transport of what the shipper declared. Whether the box holds what the invoice says is the inspection's job and nobody else's.

The question that separates them.

Ask how the goods get from the producer to the port. A forwarder who quotes from Jakarta or Surabaya without asking where the producer is has quoted the easy half of an Indonesian shipment.

The follow-up is what happens if the domestic leg slips. On an archipelago that is the leg most likely to move, and a forwarder who has never dealt with an inter-island vessel will discover it with your cargo.

Then ask whether the house bill is theirs or the carrier's, because it matters to a bank and it matters if the forwarder has a problem.

Questions buyers ask.

Read next.

• Getting it on a ship

  FCL, LCL, own consolidation or reefer, and the five costs that appear after the freight quote. Written for an archipelago.

• What happens at customs

  Who does what between the ship arriving and the goods leaving the port, and the four things that hold a container.

• Door to door or port to port

  Who arranges what, where responsibility sits, and why the simpler-sounding option is not always cheaper.

• Which Indonesian port your goods leave from

  Java has the frequency, the east has the material. Which port serves which region, and why frequency beats distance.

• Bill of lading

  The bill of lading does three jobs at once, and the third one is why an original in the wrong hands can hold up a container that has already arrived.

• Verified gross mass

  A container cannot be loaded to a vessel without a verified gross mass. Who provides it, how it is obtained, and why it catches first-time shippers.

• Marine insurance certificate

  Whether the seller insures depends on the Incoterm, and the cover level is not what buyers assume. When you need to arrange your own.

• Goods that ship as dangerous

  Charcoal, essential oils and turpentine are regulated in transit. Which everyday goods are affected.

• Why freight rates move

  The rate from last quarter is gone. What drives container rates and how to buy against that.

• Transhipment

  Most Indonesian cargo changes vessel at least once. What that adds and when to pay for direct.