Should Foreign Trade Companies Be Cautious When Using Air Freight to Middle East?
It’s a big no-no in the industry for freight forwarders to secretly run foreign trade businesses! A few days ago, I watched an interview video about a post-00s boy who made 5 million yuan in just half a year doing foreign trade for Dubai. It was shared as a very successful foreign trade case. But there was one crucial detail in the video: the boy’s cousin is a senior freight forwarder specializing in the Middle East.
Anyone in foreign trade or freight forwarding knows this well. Freight forwarders have easy access to foreign trade clients’ information. When you ship goods overseas, you have to provide your forwarder with the delivery address, product details, customs declaration documents and all related information.
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This clearly shows that freight forwarders know everything about your overseas customers—what products they want to buy and what their specific needs are. So did this post-00s boy’s success in foreign trade have anything to do with his senior forwarder cousin? We don’t know the full story, so we won’t judge. We just want to use this case to discuss whether foreign trade companies should be cautious of freight forwarders.
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Actually, the real question behind this is: should you be cautious? It all depends on whether the forwarder is reliable and whether they are also running a foreign trade business at the same time.
I have been working in air freight to Middle East for many years. I have indeed seen some dishonest companies that do the same thing as mentioned above—pretending to be freight forwarders while actually focusing on foreign trade.
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But it’s easy to tell them apart. These people put most of their energy into foreign trade, and only use the freight forwarding cover to collect customer information for product selection. Such forwarders can never grow big—that’s their obvious feature.
Just keep this in mind. Before choosing a forwarder, learn more about the company. Check if it’s a small, unregistered office or a formal, large-scale forwarder. Shipping with a big, established forwarder is completely safe.
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Take DL International Logistics as an example. We have been in air freight to Middle East for 27 years, and we treat freight forwarding as our lifelong career.
I fully understand how foreign trade traders feel—you need freight forwarders but worry about finding an untrustworthy one. It’s even worse when facing the problems we talked about earlier.
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So I usually don’t say much. I just invite customers to visit our company directly. We have nearly 100 employees, and we have made some achievements over the years. We bought the entire 8th floor of Block B, Rongde Times Square, Longgang District, Shenzhen with full payment. We are among the top 5% in the freight forwarding industry.
Many customers were doubtful at first, but they felt completely assured after an on-site visit.
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We are also a member of WCA. WCA membership is not easy to get; you have to meet strict requirements. For example, the company must be an independent freight forwarder, have a certain business scale and experience, and comply with WCA’s ethical and operational standards.
All these prove that we focus only on freight forwarding. If you need air freight to UAE or air freight to Dubai, why would you worry about choosing a forwarder like us?