Our Logistics Services

Which of them you actually need

The eight cards below answer four different questions. Start with the one that is yours and the list narrows itself.

What to move it on

Road, sea and air are a choice between three — and you only have that choice when one mode reaches both ends of the route. Then it comes down to transit against rate, and more often than not the shipper's geography and the consignee's date decide it for you. When one mode is not enough, you are no longer choosing a transport but a routing: that is multimodal, and how the legs get put together is on its own page.

A whole vehicle or a share of one

The only choice on this list that turns on volume rather than direction. It is a fork, not an add-on: the same route as groupage and as a dedicated vehicle is two different services, with different departure schedules and a different price for the same kilometre. Where the line falls, and whether your goods suit groupage, is on the groupage page.

Where the cargo waits

Storage is usually mentioned last and is worth deciding among the first: it changes both the route and the moment the customs payments fall due. The warehouse storage page is not about buildings — it sets out which properties of a consignment narrow the choice of site and regime. If the cargo has to wait somewhere, start there.

The border: two services that get confused

Customs clearance and customs consulting are not one service under two names. The difference between them is timing. Clearance works on cargo that is already moving or has already arrived: the declaration, the documents, the release. Consulting works before there is any cargo at all — at the negotiation and draft-contract stage. The working rule: if the contract is signed and the goods are shipped, you need clearance; if you are still agreeing delivery terms, price and dates, you need consulting. The same questions still have several answers at the second stage and only one at the first.

How the parts meet on one shipment

The hard part of a route is not inside any one service, it is at the joins — and the joins run in an order. Each decision is constrained by the one before it, so the expensive mistakes are almost always made further upstream than the point where they surface. Cargo that arrives ahead of its own paperwork is not a transport failure — it is a paperwork decision taken too late. The order runs like this.

Before the contract

The commodity code, the delivery terms, the wording on the invoice. These answers do not get revisited — they are already written into the document customs will see. This is what customs consulting is for, and it is the one link that cannot be caught up later.

When the shipment is booked

The mode, and the format — a dedicated vehicle or groupage. This is where the transport document is settled: a CMR, a bill of lading, an air waybill. That document then decides what customs will accept and what you can prove if the cargo arrives damaged. Which document each leg produces is on the multimodal page.

Once the route exists

Where the cargo will wait, and where it will be cleared. Both follow from what was decided earlier: the storage regime from what was settled about the import, and the place of clearance by rules of its own, which are on the customs clearance page. Which is why a warehouse picked on its storage rate, separately from the rest of the route, regularly turns out to be the wrong one.

And throughout — the dates

A delay in one part of a route rarely stays there: it turns into a cost somewhere else — at the terminal, at the warehouse, on the empty container. How much free time your leg allows depends on the mode and is set out on the relevant pages. So dates are checked against the whole route rather than against one link in it.

In practice, three typical combinations.

• A sea import from Asia: the sea leg, a transfer, customs clearance, and a road leg to the consignee's warehouse — four of the eight services on one shipment.
• A two-pallet export to the EU: groupage plus export clearance — two services, and what sets the date is the consolidation schedule rather than the speed of the vehicle.
• Equipment that arrives before its permit does: storage under customs control, and clearance once the permit is in hand. A combination that would never have been in the plan if the permit question had been asked before the contract.

Where to start

You do not have to pick the service yourself. Describe the cargo, the route and the date, and we will come back with the legs the route breaks into, where customs and storage sit in it, what we decide and what needs deciding on your side. What is worth putting in that first message, and what happens after you send it, is on the contact page.