Black Port is an international freight forwarder based in Lviv, Ukraine. Part of what a shipment needs, we own outright: vehicles with our own drivers, licensed customs brokers on staff, and direct contracts with shipping lines.
The rule is simple: we own the things whose answer is the same on every shipment, and we stay out of owning the things whose answer changes each time. A truck is needed nearly always, and needed in the same way — so the truck is ours, with our driver. A declaration is filed every time too, and it goes better when the team filing it is the team running the route — so the brokers are on staff. Which warehouse, which line, which port and which customs office suit a given consignment, though, depends on what is inside it, where it is going and when it has to be there. Owning a warehouse would mean answering that question the same way for everyone. It is not the same for everyone.
The other half we leave open on purpose. No storage site, no line, no port, no terminal, no border crossing and no customs office is fixed to us: each is picked for the shipment in front of us. The storage regime follows from what is inside the cargo and the status it is held under — the warehouse storage page goes through that; the routing is assembled around direction, deadline and the number of transfers — the multimodal page; the place of clearance is not fixed in advance either — the customs clearance page. The cost of this model is work at our end before anything moves: each shipment starts with a choice rather than a slot in a familiar pattern. The benefit is that none of those choices has been made for you in advance. Over 7+ years we have made enough of them to name the tight spot on your lane before departure rather than at the border.
The road leg runs on the company's own trucks. The schedule, and any change to it mid-route, stays with us rather than in a chain of resellers: the instruction goes straight to the driver.
The brokers are on staff, not outsourced. The customs side runs in parallel with the route, so the paperwork does not begin when the cargo arrives. How a declaration is actually put together is on the customs clearance page.
Sea bookings are made with the line itself. You see what the line confirmed rather than a relayed version of it, and schedule changes reach us from the source.
The one thing we keep out of our own hands. The site is chosen each time — by customs regime, and by what the cargo itself requires. Both are set out on the warehouse storage page.