Operator glossary
Freight forwarder
The orchestrator of your international leg — booking space, consolidating, filing customs paperwork, arranging final delivery — the vendor relationship that quietly determines your landed cost and your Q4 sanity.
A forwarder buys freight capacity wholesale and packages the door-to-door move: origin pickup, export clearance, ocean or air lift, import customs coordination, and destination delivery into FBA (via their trucking partners and Carrier Central appointments). Cross-border Amazon logistics without one means assembling five vendors yourself.
Selection beats negotiation: forwarders differ wildly on FBA-specific competence (labeling rules, appointment discipline, placement-split handling), peak-season capacity honesty, and what their all-in quotes quietly exclude. The two-forwarder structure is standard risk management — split lanes, benchmark quarterly, and keep the switch credible; a forwarder who knows you can leave prices like one.
The numbers
- Bundle: origin pickup, export clearance, freight, import coordination, final-mile into FBA with appointments.
- Evaluate on FBA competence + peak honesty + quote completeness; run two forwarders and benchmark quarterly.
Related terms