A freight quote looks simple, a lane, a transit time and a number at the bottom of a PDF. In real life that number hides local charges, coordination work, missed cut offs and a lot of trust. When I talk to a new forwarder I treat it as choosing a partner, not a spreadsheet cell. The first call is where that decision really starts.
Price is a starting point, not the decision
Over the years, moving goods between China and Europe, I have learned that the cheapest quote often becomes the most expensive shipment. Not because the forwarder is evil, but because important details were never discussed.
In most companies the forwarder touches more than the freight line on an invoice. They influence:
- How clear your landed cost is when you quote customers
- How often your shipments miss vessels or flights
- How many emails your team writes to chase updates
- How nervous you feel when something goes wrong at customs
Price still matters. It just does not tell you if this is someone you want to call when a container is stuck in a port over a holiday or when an air freight shipment misses a cut off on a Friday afternoon.
What I want to understand in the first call
My goal in the first call is not to negotiate every cent. My goal is to understand how this forwarder thinks about service, risk and communication. I focus on four areas:
- Lanes and expertise
- Costs and transparency
- Operations and communication
- Risk, customs and local partners
If we cannot talk openly about these topics now, it will not be easier when a container is delayed and a customer is waiting in Sweden.
Questions about lanes and expertise
Many forwarders say they can ship from anywhere to anywhere. I prefer the ones who are honest about where they are strong. So I ask very directly:
- Which lanes are your strongest when we talk about China to Northern Europe
- Do you have your own offices or trusted agents at the origin and at the destination
- What kind of customers do you work with on these lanes today
- Can you describe a typical shipment that looks like ours, in size and frequency
I listen less to the marketing language and more to how specific they are. If they can name ports, terminals, usual bottlenecks and common mistakes importers make, that is a good sign. If they talk about sea freight, air freight and rail in the same sentence without distinctions, I ask more questions.
Questions about costs and transparency
A headline rate per container or per cubic meter is not enough. The local charges and handling costs around that rate can easily surprise you. I want that surprise to happen in a call, not after three containers.
I usually ask:
- Can you walk me through a typical invoice from this lane, line by line
- Which costs are predictable for every shipment and which are variable
- How do you handle local charges at origin and destination, and how early can you estimate them
- What are the most common reasons your invoices end up higher than the original quote
A good forwarder answers with concrete examples, not only with the words standard, depends or market conditions. They should be able to tell you what hurts customers if they do not prepare documents on time, if weight or volume changes, or if customs need extra checks.
I also ask how they handle LCL versus FCL, surcharges like GRI, congestion or war risk, and whether they help clients compare DAP, DDP, FOB and EXW in a clear way. These details decide your real landed cost, not the number in bold on the first quote.
Questions about operations and communication
For me, communication is often more important than a small difference in price. A forwarder who answers quickly and clearly saves my team hours every month. So in the first call I ask about operations as much as about rates.
Examples:
- Who will be our main contact on a daily basis, and who is the backup if that person is away
- How do you prefer to handle bookings and updates, email, portal, chat, phone
- How often do you send status updates by default and what is included
- Can you show a sample of the tracking or milestone view we would get
I also ask what happens when something fails. Which channel do we use then, and how quickly can we expect answers. You learn a lot from how comfortable they are talking about delays and problems.
Questions about risk, customs and local partners
Forwarding is not only about moving boxes. It is about managing risk across different rules, customs offices and public holidays. I work a lot with China and Europe, so my questions often touch that reality:
- How do you support customers with documentation for customs, both in China and in Europe
- What are the most common customs problems on this lane and how do you help avoid them
- Do you offer help with export and import declarations or do we need another partner for that
- How do you handle insurance and claims if something is damaged or delayed
I am not looking for guarantees. I am looking for a clear view of who does what. If they say that everything is simple and almost nothing ever goes wrong, I get nervous.
Incoterms and who does what
Many painful freight stories start with one small line in a sales contract, the Incoterm. If you and your forwarder do not read that line the same way, the confusion will show up later on a dock or in a warehouse.
When I talk to a forwarder about China to Europe shipments I ask how they normally work with:
- FOB and EXW from Chinese factories, including who books the truck from the factory to the port
- CIF and CFR when a supplier controls the main leg but you want visibility and help at destination
- DAP and DDP for customers in Europe who want a single all in price to their door
A good forwarder explains where their responsibility starts and ends in each case. They talk about handover points, documents and how they coordinate with the factory or the importer. That conversation is often more important than one more euro off the sea freight rate.
Red flags I listen for
The words a forwarder uses in the first call tell you a lot about how they work. Over time a few red flags have repeated themselves:
- They avoid detailed questions about your cargo and only push for volume and frequency.
- They promise faster transit times than everyone else without a clear explanation.
- They are vague about local charges and say something like we will see when the shipment comes.
- They do not want to name the local agents or offices they work with.
- They become defensive when you ask about past delays or claims.
None of these are automatic deal breakers, but together they make me careful. I would rather work with someone who gives a slightly higher quote and a very clear explanation.
How I compare two similar quotes
Sometimes you end up with two or three offers that are close in price and transit time. Then the soft factors start to matter. To make the choice less emotional I write it down in a simple way:
- Service fit, do they clearly understand our type of cargo, destinations and customers
- Transparency, did they explain costs, risks and processes in a way that my team understood
- Communication, how fast and how clear have they been in the first week
- Operations, do they have local strength where we really need it, for example Shanghai and Gothenburg
I rate each forwarder on these points and add the price last. The best choice is often the one that makes everything around the shipment easier, not only the freight invoice.
A simple checklist you can reuse
To make this practical I keep a short checklist next to the screen when I speak to a new forwarder. Most of the points in this article fit into a few lines:
- Can they clearly explain their strengths on our main lanes
- Did we walk through a full sample invoice together
- Do we have names for daily contacts and backups on both sides
- Are Incoterms, local charges and responsibilities written down in plain language
- Did we talk about what happens when something goes wrong
After the call I send a short summary email with the key points we discussed and ask them to confirm it. That small habit removes a lot of later confusion and gives me a written record to compare when the first invoice arrives.
Start with a small but real shipment
No call or PDF quote can fully replace real life. Before I move a big share of our volume to a new forwarder, I try to start with a small but real shipment. It should be important enough that we care about the result, but not critical for the whole business.
On that test shipment I watch:
- How clear the booking confirmation is
- How early we get documents and instructions
- How transparent they are when something changes
- How the final invoice matches what we discussed in the first call
After that, the decision is usually easy. Either this feels like a partner we can grow with, or it feels like a relationship that would drain our time and energy.
If you are about to choose a new forwarder for China to Europe or similar lanes and want a second pair of eyes on the quotes, this is the kind of work I enjoy. The right partner can make your logistics feel almost boring, and that is a good thing.