A freight forwarder secretly doing foreign trade is a big no-no in our industry! A couple of days ago, I watched an interview video. It said a post-00s guy made 5 million RMB in half a year doing foreign trade with air freight to Dubai. That’s a very successful case study. But there’s one important detail in the video: this guy’s cousin is an experienced freight forwarder for air freight to middle east. Anyone who works in foreign trade or freight forwarding knows this – forwarders can easily access their clients’ customer information. Because when you ship goods overseas, you have to give your forwarder the delivery address, product details, customs documents, and so on.

So it’s true: forwarders know everything about your overseas customers – what products they want, what their needs are. So, does this post-00s guy’s success have anything to do with his experienced forwarder cousin? Without knowing the details, we can’t judge. I just want to use this story to ask: should we be careful with freight forwarders when doing foreign trade?

Actually, the real question is something else. Whether you need to be careful depends on if the forwarder is reliable and if they also do foreign trade on the side. I’ve been doing air freight to middle east for many years, and yes, I’ve seen some fake forwarders. Similar to the story above – they pretend to be forwarders, but really they just want to do foreign trade.

But it’s easy to tell the difference. Their main energy is on foreign trade, and they use the forwarder label as a cover. They treat their customers as free product testers. Those forwarders never grow big. That’s their clear sign. So just focus on that. Before choosing a forwarder, do some research on the company. See if it’s a small operation in a village or a proper large forwarder. If you pick a big, established forwarder, you’ll be fine.

Take our company DL International Logistics as an example. We’ve been doing air freight to middle east for 27 years. We see freight forwarding as our lifelong career. I fully understand how foreign traders think – you need forwarders, but you’re afraid of finding an unreliable one. Especially something like the story above – that’s even scarier.

So I usually don’t say much. I just invite the client to come see our office. We have nearly 100 employees. Over the years we’ve saved up a little, and we bought the entire 8th floor, Block B, Rongde Times Square, Longgang District, Shenzhen – fully paid. That puts us in the top 5% of freight forwarders. Many clients are skeptical at first, but after a site visit, they feel completely at ease.

We are now a member of WCA. Becoming a WCA member is not easy – you have to meet certain requirements: your company must be an independent freight forwarder with a certain scale and experience, and you must follow WCA’s ethical and business standards. All of this shows we are truly dedicated to freight forwarding. If you need to send air freight to middle east, what’s there to worry about when you choose a forwarder like us?