Shipping a product from China to an Amazon fulfillment center is often the last thing Amazon sellers worry about. They can be so focused on designing and marketing their new product that the supply chain setup can be overlooked.
Overseas transportation from factory to fulfillment center can be expensive and risk making your products unviable. This is especially true when using a normal parcel delivery company, such as UPS, as your Amazon freight forwarder.
In reality, these regular parcel services are only price-competitive up to about 150 kgs (in chargeable weight). For anything bigger, it’s more cost-effective to work with a freight forwarder, like Flexport or Freightos.
When choosing an Amazon FBA freight forwarder, many business owners will understandably gravitate towards the one offering the lowest initial price. However, these Amazon sellers can learn a hard lesson once hidden charges start appearing and there is uncertainty around the exact location of their products.
This can end up costing sellers more time, energy, and money than if they had chosen a service-based freight forwarder who offers honest, up-front pricing, and real-time shipment visibility.
So, with this in mind, let’s take a look at how to choose the best Amazon freight forwarder for your FBA business.
Three Key Attributes When Choosing the Best Freight Forwarder for Amazon FBA:
1. Communication
E-commerce is a chaotic business environment, prone to last-minute changes ranging from adjusting carton dimensions to forecasting the speed at which products can sell.
Using a freight forwarder for Amazon FBA who communicates clearly and effectively will save your businesses money and a lot of stress. A prime example is making sure the same company partners with you across multiple time zones rather than using third-party couriers.
When selecting an Amazon freight forwarder, always ask them about their physical presence and capabilities in both the country of origin and the destination.
Communication doesn’t have a tangible price tag, but it delivers incredible value (and peace of mind) while you can focus on growing your business.
Before confirming an upcoming shipment, pay attention to how your forwarder communicates with you. This will tell you a lot about their level of customer service and might reveal future communication challenges.
2. Transparency
The first time you get a quote from a freight forwarder can be confusing. And this is where “transparency” becomes a valuable part of the process.
To have control of your shipment, your forwarder needs to be able to clearly explain what you’re being charged for, and to what extent you can include or exclude features you don’t feel necessary.
Before booking your next shipment, make sure you understand customs duties and Incoterms. This way, you’ll have a clearer understanding of what’s included in your shipment and how to avoid unexpected charges along the way.
At origin, factories often partner with freight forwarders who work through an agent model. These shipping agents do not have a global presence and there is often a lack of visibility. It’s important to know exactly what’s going on with your shipment so you can make plans around the arrival of your cargo across the different time zones.
With so many advances in technology, one might wonder why many freight forwarders still manage shipments through outdated methods. When shipping goods around the globe, exceptions are bound to happen. Nonetheless, you should be informed as they happen — giving you the valuable opportunity to react.
When choosing the best Amazon FBA freight forwarder, ask them how they handle pricing, billing, and shipment tracking to be sure they’re providing the level of transparency you need.
3. Familiarity With Amazon FBA
Online shopping is clearly the future of retail. Many logistics companies still haven’t embraced this change. Partnering with a freight forwarder that is familiar with e-commerce and Amazon FBA is essential as you aim to quickly grow your business.
Let’s take, for example, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)’s strict guidelines around deliveries and packaging. As a seller, your hands are tied following Amazon’s rules and regulations. Freight forwarders who understand this side of the business, and have dealt with Amazon thousands of times, can easily navigate you through Amazon’s unique fulfillment requirements.
The best piece of advice we can give you: ask your Amazon FBA freight forwarder how they approach optimizing your door-to-door costs as opposed to just port-to-port. You can achieve tremendous cost savings using the right partner for the last-mile delivery.
The Best Freight Forwarders for Amazon FBA
Here are some of the best Amazon freight forwarders we would recommend:
- Flexport: https://www.flexport.com
- Freightos: https://www.freightos.com
- Unicargo: https://www.unicargo.com/amazon-fba/
- Shippo: https://www.shippo.co.uk
- Medey: https://www.medey.com
Final Thoughts on Choosing an Amazon Freight Forwarder
Don’t just go with the cheapest option offered. With so many hidden costs and your responsibilities as an importer, forwarders who offer a premium service, in combination with a competitive rate, could end up saving you hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars on the backend.
Make sure the Amazon freight forwarder you choose offers transparent quoting, a clear and collaborative communication tool, and readily available updates on the status of your shipment.
Also, don’t underestimate the value of in-house customs brokerage services that can drastically reduce transit times. Keep in mind that you can’t freely pick and choose your tariff codes, which are regulated by government entities.
If someone tells you they can get you a better code for cheaper duties, they may be cutting corners and putting your business at a compliance risk.
We recommend you start by checking out Freightos and Flexport, both of which are used by thousands of Amazon sellers.
Good Luck & Happy Selling
James 🙂
Amazon Freight Forwarder FAQs
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James is an ecommerce entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience selling online. He has a wealth of knowledge in selling on Amazon FBA, eBay, and building ecommerce websites.
Despite running a successful business, James has decided to share his expertise with others by offering guidance through his website, “The Selling Guys,” "The Selling Guys Facebook Page," and his “Amazon Selling for Beginners” Facebook Group.
James now has three children, two dogs, and a cat. 👨
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very helpful blog, I am doing Amazon FBA UK and sourcing from China, I think the key thing in doing FBA is to find professional suppliers and freight forwarders to handle your first leg for your Amazon FBA, like IRFREIGHT, highly recommended.
I avoid freight carriers at ALL COSTS. Reason…they are in the game of holding and insuring your custom-cross over. You can bypass that altogether, with proper planning and paperwork. IE never do minimum paperwork. Customs becomes a loss once you hit week 3 and they essentially give up on helping you. (ie impound lot). All port cities are better at customs than a freight forwarder. Think PO box versus regular bulk male. If you have week entry points into a continent such as Africa – I really can’t justify a freight forwarder. Again, they are there to protect and insure merchandise. They don’t release items easily because they are officially bound…
Here is some vital information that EVERYONE should know, but I have never seen it mentioned.
WHAT YOU HAVE TO KNOW in the shipping plan created in Seller Central, is that if you have ONE shipping plan for products from another country imported into the USA, you CAN’T get the discounted shipping/freight rates from Amazon-Partnered-Carriers.
This is vital – read that sentence again, please. What it means is that the discounted shipping/freight rates from Amazon-Partnered-Carriers is ONLY for the freight component of shipping WITHIN the USA, and where the pickup point and the destination are BOTH within the USA. Effectively you have to have 2 plans for shipping/freight – one for the shipment from the FOB stage in China (or wherever it is manufactured) to the port in the USA (this plan made by the Freight Forwarder), and the second plan from that USA port to the Amazon warehouse/distribution centres (this plan is made by you in Seller Central). NOWHERE is this spelled out for newbies like us to understand. Amazon-Partnered-Carriers rates are MUCH MUCH MUCH cheaper, which is mentioned in a few places within Amazon Seller Central, but not in the shipping page! So as newbies we didn’t know any different, when there was only one option available.
In retrospect, our ‘mistake’ can be traced back to the sequence of filling out a shipping plan. Because we didn’t know that the Amazon shipping plan only covered the land-component of (within USA) freight costs, when the first question asked when creating a shipping plan is ‘where is it being shipped from?’, we entered ‘from Shenzen, China’. What would you have put down as the answer? From then on, the questions asked are based on the first answer, as you get different ones depending on how you answer each question. Our shipping plan said something along the lines of ‘Amazon-Partnered-Carriers are not available to this location’. They didn’t say ‘… because the origin point should be LA, California, not Shenzen China’. We didn’t know better, so we left it in the hands of the Freight Forwarder, who then used their choice of carrier, but at a much higher price. We paid over US$4000 for the freight, compared to the cheapest way (Amazon-Partnered-Carriers) of about US$1000.
The background to this saga is that our product is small-oversize, and has its own shipping carton. We ordered 200 items, so there are 200 boxes. The manufacturer did a good job. Being very new to all this, we then employed an Inspection Agent, and a Shipping Agent. Our Freight Forwarder handled both tasks. So we made up a shipping plan in Seller Central and gave the details to our Freight Forwarder and waited for it all to transpire.
When we made out the shipping plan, Amazon requested that we ship to 3 warehouses in USA (Redlands CA, Clear Brook VA, and Groveport OH). We passed this info along to our Freight Forwarder and they made up a quote, which was high, but being total amateurs at all this, we thought it was because the product is slightly oversize, and needed special treatment. It was only a month or so later, after the product was live in Amazon (and as our experience navigating Seller Central grew), that we sought clarification of the costs.
During the whole process, neither our Freight Forwarder nor Amazon offered the comment that there was a cheaper way. Effectively nobody knows about this ‘problem’, that if your shipping-plan-answer to the first question is not within the USA, you are excluded from cheaper discounted freight.! We have discussed freight details with an Amazon rep on the phone about 5 times, and emailed at least 5 times, and only after the last time did we finally get the right answer.