About half the products we buy in stores are imported, which means they not only went through a complex shipping process, but also had to be cleared through customs before they could be sold to us.
Clearing customs is a painful process – the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has about 30,000 different product classifications, as do other countries – and customs classifications can be subtle.
For example, importing plastic disposable cups to Israel results in different tariffs depending on whether or not there is a logo printed on the cup…and don’t get me started on duties for Santa Claus suits. In the last two years tariff rates have changed often and unpredictably as a trade war raged, complicating things even further.
Freightos.com already makes international shipping easy. For example, we are helping importers turn on a dime and find shipping routes from South East Asia, while China is partly closed by the coronavirus. But there’s no point in making shipping easy and cheap if goods then get stuck in customs. It is a key part of the Freightos.com mission to make sure that clearing customs is easy and that products travel smoothly all the way to the shelf.
Enter FedEx…
Recognizing the myriad complexities of the supply chain, FedEx, the express delivery giant founded in the 1970s, continuously added key pieces of the logistics puzzle to the services it provides its customers. In addition to express courier shipping, Fedex added road freight, air and ocean freight forwarding, and customs brokering. As a result, they are currently believed to be the largest customs broker in the United States and one of the most digitized and efficient.
This week, Freightos is proud to announce that FedEx Logistics incorporated its digital customs brokerage service into the Freightos.com marketplace. This addition now enables our 150,000+ registered importers and exporters who search and instantly book multimodal freight on the Freightos.com platform to benefit from FedEx’s world-class US imports customs brokerage expertise as well.
This partnership is another example of how digitization is leveling the playing field and extending seamless, one-stop, top-tier services to small and medium sized players.
And why stop there?
FedEx is helping to automate customs brokerage on Freightos.com, and we want to help FedEx automate their air and ocean freight forwarding.
The Freightos Group is proud to announce that FedEx Logistics has rolled out WebCargo AcceleRate by Freightos, our multi-modal rate management and sales digitization platform, and WebCargo Air, the premier air cargo pricing, quoting, and eBooking platform, which spans over 330 airlines.
Together, these solutions streamline and simplify the complex task of price management, enabling instant global freight pricing for FedEx Logistics customers globally, improving customer service and increasing internal efficiencies.
The digital transformation of the freight industry marches forward with each year. Freightos is privileged to launch this two way partnership with famed logistics leader FedEx, bringing new efficiencies to both Freightos.com and FedEx Logistics.
