Why Air Freight May Be Good For Your Business
Air freight is a very efficient means of transporting goods quickly and reliably yet accounts for less than 3 percent of global trade from a volume standpoint. However, when measured in terms of value air freight takes a larger share of the market at 35 percent. This is due to a variety of highly logical reasons. Here are a few reasons why air freight may be good for your business.
Size
Despite ocean freight being able to carry a higher volume of goods and also costing less per tonnage air freight has proven its use for high-value low volume shipments. For goods less than a truckload and at a low weight the cost effectiveness of air freight becomes more advantageous.
Whilst cost is a highly important factor in deciding freight options for logistics companies it is often not the only consideration. It is important to understand how freight weight and size is charged. Airlines bill by chargeable weight. This is calculated from a mixture of weight and size of a shipment. On the other hand, ocean carriers charge per container for shipping in containers.
Weight can factor into the cost from ocean carriers but their calculations are more based on the size than weight alone. It is often cheaper to ship larger and heavier shipments by sea. As shipments get smaller however, the difference between prices of air and ocean freight becomes smaller potentially making air freight cheaper and more viable.
Speed
Air freight is much faster making it much more ideal for time sensitive goods. Many sea shipments can take around a month to arrive while an air shipment would take a day or two. Time sensitive goods tend to be of higher value.
Furthermore, air freight offers more flexibility through its ability to go almost anywhere. Air freight can get into places with less infrastructure than ocean and land freight. This increased flexibility gives businesses more options with the high valued goods they wish to transport.
Safety
Air freight is heavily regulated and held to intense standards making it very safe. This is crucial for high valued goods. Also, due to safer transport those goods require less packaging and insurance coverage. Businesses can find this to be beneficial to their cost of doing business. International security standards and regulations help to guarantee safe service when using air freight. This helps to further offset the potential higher price of air freight.
Moreover, customs at sea ports are more prone to experience holdups. This coupled with higher warehousing costs at seaports continues to give a shipping decision maker a reason to look at air freight more closely.
Reliability
More importantly may be the higher reliability of air freight in terms of schedules. Airlines are more on schedule than ocean and land freight and are also better able to be tracked. This helps businesses provide better communication to other parties involved in the movement of goods. A flight may be delayed by weather or operational factors but airlines are able to recover and make up time fairly quickly.
Furthermore, there are usually daily flights between many major destinations around the globe. Therefore missing a flight will not have much of a chain effect on the movement of goods. On the other hand, ocean freight is prone to be off schedule more regularly. Also, ocean freight usually has a less frequent schedule. Missing the cutoff at a port would result in a bigger effect on the movement of goods. For a business being a day or two off can have serious consequences to reputation and cost.
Flexibility
Some air freight companies offer other modes of freight forwarding to get shipments to the final destination. It would be wise to consider if the air freight company you are working with has last leg delivery capability. By using the speed of air freight along with trucking for the shipment to get to its final destination could offer businesses greater flexibility.
Customer Service
Air freight companies pride themselves on the ability to offer on-time fast shipping services. With that in mind, many of them strive for good customer service that is reliable and responsive. Because of air freight’s speed, on-point communication is essential and the customer service usually reflects that. For a business this could put peace of mind in the decision makers mind about how high-value shipments will be handled.
All in all, when it comes to speed, safety and flexibility air freight shines as highly advantageous. Despite costs being higher in some cases due to the increased speed of air freight, other benefits such as reliability and the less need for warehousing space and lower insurance coverage compensates for this. Smart business decision makers would still study the viability of all available shipping methods but it is clear to see how and why air freight has clear advantages and is a popular method of transportation for high valued goods.
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