Are you about to carry out cross-border shipping? Here’s how to make it more reliable.

How can you improve the reliability of cross-border shipping? 

Whatever your exact reasons may be for investing in freight services that are intended to get your goods from one location to another, it is not only the speed and efficiency of the delivery process, or even the security and safety of the products being transported, that will matter to you. That is because such freight solutions will also need to be unfailingly reliable if they are to be a good investment. 

International shipping is inherently extremely complex, so it should sadly be no surprise that goods can occasionally fail to arrive at their intended destination at the date and time intended, and in the desired condition. However, it should never be presumed that unreliable shipping experiences “simply happen”; after all, this will not be tolerated by the recipients of such goods. 

In any case, the leading freight forwarding companies, importers and exporters will always be implementing measures to optimise their logistics processes, to help improve reliability. 

Below, we have outlined some examples of those steps that you might take for your own organisation’s shipping operations. 

Make sure you achieve consistent customs compliance 

Many instances of shipments failing to travel smoothly across national borders, can be traced back to highly avoidable customs delays. 

Whatever items you are seeking to move from one territory to another, it is crucial to be well-versed in the relevant customs rules and regulations. 

You should certainly know, for example, whether the goods that you are looking to transport are subject to any restrictions or prohibitions that will cause customs issues. Furthermore, you must ensure all the relevant paperwork and documentation is completed and correctly filled in. 

Select the most appropriate quality packaging for each shipment 

The question of freight reliability does not solely centre on whether the customer will be able to expect the given goods to arrive at the time they are supposed to arrive, and at the right location. This is because, if you are sending goods across borders, you must also take every reasonable step to guard against the risk of the shipment sustaining damage during its journey. 

Often, a matter as simple as poorly chosen packaging can cause such problems. Naturally, you will need to account for the cost of packaging materials, too. But if, for example, the to-be-transported goods are fragile or would be highly susceptible to harsh weather or high humidity levels that you know they will be subject to during their journey, you will need to make sure the packaging can stand up to such conditions. 

A failure to ensure this could lead to damaged and delayed products that leave customers disappointed, while also progressively damaging your organisation’s reputation. 

Establish strong and enduring partnerships 

Coordinating the delivery of certain goods of yours to all manner of destinations around the world, is a task that necessitates keeping certain elements consistent over time. 

So, it can be an exceedingly wise course of action to partner with a global freight forwarding company that has an excellent and longstanding reputation, to help give you the utmost confidence in the reliability of its delivery services. 

When it comes to something as specialised and complicated as cross-border shipping, the importance of putting in place genuinely reliable transport partnerships cannot be emphasised enough. Here at KTL UK, we are pleased to have long made available professional and reliable freight forwarding services to a broad variety of clients around the globe. 

To discuss how our expert team can help bring you the benefit of such dependable shipping solutions, and to request your competitive quote, please don’t hesitate to contact us.