Thinking of Shipping via Air Freight to the Middle East Without Checking the Freight Forwarder's Office? — They Might Just Be Using a Shared Workspace!
Let's be honest. If you're shipping high-value goods via air freight to the Middle East, and you haven't visited the freight forwarder's office in person, then that contract of yours is basically just a piece of paper full of words.
Manager Ge was shipping high-tech chemical materials, his company's core product with a value comparable to white gold, using air freight to the Middle East. The forwarder he initially hired promised with confidence that it would take 5-7 days via air express to reach the designated warehouse. But for some reason, the shipment spent just 2 days in the air. He later found out that to save a little on costs, the forwarder had changed the route from a direct flight to one transiting through Singapore. When Manager Ge tried to find their address, he discovered the 'company' was actually just a shared workspace above a 24-hour convenience store.
Of course, such shell companies have nothing to lose. They'll take any job as long as you pay. Manager Ge deeply regretted not checking out the company beforehand.
I told Manager Ge, when you choose a freight forwarder for air freight to the Middle East, you must visit their office. You need to see their scale for yourself, and more importantly, since you're trusting them with your goods, check if they have their own assets. A company with assets is less likely to just disappear overnight. It at least proves the forwarder has been deeply involved in the industry for a good eight to ten years.
Our company is a perfect example. We occupy the entire 8th floor, Block B of Rongde International Plaza in Longgang District, Shenzhen (the whole floor is owned by us, not rented). We have nearly 100 employees, our own dedicated foreign trade warehouse, and our own trucking team. You can visit us in person or via video call anytime. Many of our clients decided to work with us only after visiting our office and seeing our capabilities with their own eyes.
Many small freight forwarding companies are just tiny operations with a few people, maybe based in an urban village. They'll accept any shipment at any price, competing mainly on being the cheapest. But they offer no real service throughout the process. They book space on the spot from the open market, so transit times can't be guaranteed. For customs clearance at the destination, they simply sell the shipment to others like us, who have our own customs clearance and delivery teams.
Manager Ge admitted he regretted only focusing on the price initially. I asked him, "Did you think the service for air freight to the Middle East was standard and identical across all forwarders? And based on that, just pick the one with the lowest price?" There are 60,000 freight forwarders in Shenzhen alone, with over a thousand handling air freight to the Middle East. This means there are over a thousand different service standards. Here's a simple example: if you give the same machinery blueprint to several different factories to produce, you'll end up with products of varying quality. The same logic applies when choosing different forwarders for air freight to the Middle East.
For us in the air freight to Middle East business, owning our office building isn't the main goal, but it does show that we are among the top 1% of forwarders in terms of strength. We confidently and proactively invite clients to visit our office or do a video tour because we have real capability backing us up. This capability comes from us securing 20 fixed pallet spaces every week with two major airlines. In contrast, most of those forwarders you see constantly advertising themselves as 'primary operators' for air freight to the Middle East, even the better ones, might only have the capacity for 2 or 3 pallets per week. Securing these spaces requires significant financial resources – a lot of it. This is the hard proof of our real strength and capability.
I proactively invited Manager Ge for a video call to tour our company. This gave him a full understanding of our operations. Finally, he felt assured. He immediately arranged to send his next batch of goods to our warehouse. We, as agreed, booked the space for 2 days later. Five days after that, Manager Ge's chemical materials arrived safely at the warehouse in Dubai.