Another freight forwarding company went bankrupt! Nearly one million yuan in funds involved

As an important part of the cross-border ecological chain, logistics is the focus of many sellers. Due to the complexity of cross-border logistics, dealing with freight forwarders has naturally become a common practice for sellers. However, as cross-border logistics enters a gold rush period, many people follow suit and enter the freight forwarding industry, which intensifies industry competition and makes the freight forwarding industry a mixed bag.

Earlier, a freight forwarder violated the regulations in declaration, resulting in more than a dozen containers being seized and incurring millions of storage fees, forcing the sellers to collect the fees to complete customs clearance. Now the same incident has happened again, making people in the industry wonder what is going on in the freight forwarding industry?

Several freight forwarding companies in Shenzhen went bankrupt, involving a sum of over one million yuan

Freight forwarding company bankruptcy is not a rare thing, but during this period, the bankruptcy of multiple freight forwarding companies has been all over the cross-border circle, which has really made many people in the circle sweat and worry that their goods may be involved.

A recent case is that a company in Pinghu, Shenzhen, which does the first leg of FBA in the United States , received a lot of goods from its peers, among which the largest one was 200 cubic meters. However, due to the company's capital turnover problems, 8 containers incurred high demurrage fees at the US port.

Although two containers with less costs were paid by the second-generation company and placed in the company's overseas warehouse, the second-generation company required the cargo owner to share the demurrage and pay the freight again before arranging the US overseas warehouse to release the goods for delivery. This means that if the seller wants to get the goods, in addition to paying the demurrage, he has to pay the freight again.

In response to the above situation, many sellers said: "If the product is not of high value, it is better to abandon it. At worst, you will lose both the money and the goods."

It is understood that there are still 6 containers that have not been picked up, and some of the containers have been stranded at the port for more than 70 days, incurring more than 120,000 US dollars in demurrage. In the leaked documents, we can see that the demurrage that the sellers need to bear is 125,646 US dollars, which is about 900,000 yuan in RMB.

According to investigations, the situation of the above-mentioned companies is just a microcosm of the freight forwarding industry. There are many cases where freight forwarders and cargo owners have been implicated due to reasons such as broken capital chains.

A freight forwarding company in Shanghai had problems with cash flow and owed a large amount of money to the shipping company, which also resulted in the cargo owners who cooperated with it being unable to pick up their goods. The cooperating freight forwarder was implicated and many of the company's bills of lading were stuck.

Shenzhen's leading freight forwarder falsely declared 11 shipments of goods totaling 14 containers, which resulted in the goods being detained after arriving at the port. It is estimated that RMB 1.943 million in container overage and storage fees have been incurred. In order to facilitate the resolution of the matter, the company contacted the cargo owner to pay the relevant amount to complete customs clearance and delivery.

After a salesperson resigned, he did not make any handover and started reselling goods using the company's name, causing multiple companies to be involved and the amount reached hundreds of thousands.

A logistics company took more than three months to deliver a batch of goods to a seller, causing the seller to miss the peak season . After the products were finally put on the shelves, it was discovered that nearly 100 products were lost, and the freight forwarder ignored the seller's argument.

In general, the cross-border logistics industry is in chaos, and the cross-border logistics companies that have problems do not have strong risk resistance. However, they seem to always have a fluke mentality. When there are no problems, they continue to take in goods and make money. When there are problems, they run away quickly. In the end, the only ones who get hurt are the sellers.

Frequent crashes of freight forwarders: Sellers are seriously injured

In fact, there are reasons behind the frequent explosions in the cross-border logistics industry. Compared with the grand occasion of sky-high freight rates and freight forwarders waiting to receive goods in 2021, this year's cross-border circle seems to have encountered a cold winter. Affected by multiple factors such as the economic situation, politics and the epidemic, overseas consumers are no longer passionate, sellers' sales have dropped sharply, and the demand for shipments has inevitably dropped. Freight rates have fallen to the bottom, and freight forwarders are not having a good time.

Unlike some bad apples, the freight forwarders who earn the difference honestly say that they are very tired, encounter various risks and troubles every day. Not to mention the salary. In addition to the newly employed logistics business personnel who receive zero orders every month and can only get the basic salary , many logistics personnel who have been in the industry for a long time also said that they received very few goods this year. In order to increase the number of orders, they have begun to visit new customers.

It is reported that some logistics companies can only lower the price to receive goods in order to stabilize the company's cash flow, but once the capital chain is broken in the later stage, it is inevitable that the goods will be detained at the back end, the dealer will run away, and even the dealer will ask the customer to pay again to redeem the goods . Some sellers who have tried this said that they can empathize with this. In the best case, they can pay to get the goods back, but in the worst case, they will lose both the money and the goods.

The industry is also filled with information such as "a certain freight forwarder ran away with the money", "a certain freight forwarder collected the money for the fast ship but transferred it to the slow ship", "a certain freight forwarder made false declarations and the goods were detained" and so on.

This situation is not the fault of one party. Some sellers want to take advantage of the situation, and some freight forwarders want to make "quick money" through various "channels", so it is inevitable that there will be one after another. But as the saying goes, you get what you pay for, and the freight forwarding market is also about what you pay for.

Low prices are a dangerous signal in themselves, seriously disrupting the profit rules of the industry. Companies with profit problems are like buildings without foundations, which may collapse at any time. When sellers hand over goods to such companies, it is like burying a time bomb and waiting for it to explode.

"It doesn't mean you have to find a freight forwarder with the highest price. It's enough to find one with a medium price. You have to believe that the wool comes from the sheep. If the unit price is cheap, you will definitely be charged a surcharge or something later, but in the end it's all the same." said an industry insider.

Under such circumstances, it is particularly important for sellers to keep their eyes open and choose a suitable logistics company. When choosing a logistics company, sellers can refer to the following points:

1. Look at the size of the company. As the saying goes, the size of a company determines its overall strength. You can learn about the company's size and operating strength through platforms such as Qichacha;

2. Look at the quality of logistics services, the degree of specialization and the diversity of services, such as whether the logistics track of the goods is updated in a timely manner, timeliness guarantee, and whether there are relevant insurance services;

3. Check the safety, whether there are any problems such as lost or damaged items, and how the problems are handled;

4. Check the freight rates, compare with the industry prices, and see if there are other hidden charges in the unit price. Of course, the lower the price, the better;

5. Clarify the responsibility and understand the problems that may be encountered after delivery and how to deal with them;

In addition to the above references, sellers also need to keep in mind that they should not be greedy for small profits and choose reliable freight forwarders and carriers to ensure their own stability. Of course, logistics companies also need to operate legally and honestly and be customer-centric in order to go further.

https://www.ennews.com/article-27213-1.html

Freight Forwarding

Seller

Ocean Freight