When you send shipments by air freight to Middle East and look for a freight forwarder, you need to know whether you want low prices or reliable service. It all depends on whether the forwarder works for peers or direct clients.

Forwarders serving peers basically just sell space. The only service they need to provide is making sure your cargo isn’t left behind. But right now, there’s more space than cargo. Do you really think your goods will be left behind? So when dealing with peers, it’s all about price. We book with whoever is cheaper. As for service, most companies are pretty much the same.

For direct clients, there are two situations. If your newly developed customer ships general cargo, you’ll just compare prices among forwarders. Any forwarder can handle general cargo. With thousands of forwarders competing, customers will definitely choose the one with the lowest shipping cost.

But low prices have their limits. To some extent, an unusually low price for air freight to Middle East is one of the signs of an untrustworthy forwarder. You can tell by checking two things.

First, if the price is too low. Everyone in the foreign trade and logistics industry knows the costs. How can they deliver your goods overseas at such a cheap rate? How is this price even calculated? A suspiciously low price is a red flag for bad forwarders.

Second, find out if the forwarder is just a middleman or if they operate their own routes, handle loading and arrange flights directly. A middleman might not mean to cheat you, but the multiple agents in the chain could cause problems.

If it’s not their own channel, they still take a profit from your payment while looking for even cheaper options. In the end, you pay a decent price but get a low-quality channel after layers of commission. No profit means no service — this is an unbreakable rule.

So here’s the key point: if you want reasonable prices for air freight to Middle East and want to avoid middlemen, don’t hesitate to visit the forwarder’s office.

Take DL International Logistics as an example. I always invite customers to visit us in person. When you see our 20,000-square-meter, six-story dedicated foreign trade warehouse in Yantian, our 100-plus team, and our fully-owned whole 8th floor of Block B, Rongde Times Square in Longgang District — do you think any middleman could be this large-scale?

If your customer ships more complex goods, such as dangerous goods, oversized cargo, flat rack containers and other special items, price won’t be the main concern. What matters most is the forwarder’s professionalism.

Special cargo can easily run into problems during booking and shipping if the forwarder is unprofessional. For these customers, forwarders compete on experience, expertise and unmatched advantages. It’s normal for shipping costs to be a bit higher, because you’re not just selling a service — you’re selling valuable experience and technical barriers built by resource advantages.

Again, take DL International Logistics. Fast customs clearance is one of our core strengths. For air freight to UAE, our local customs clearance and delivery team is fully localized and large-scale, with hundreds of staff including 17 full-time customs specialists and several senior consultants who have worked in local customs.

Urgent shipments can clear customs in just 2 hours, something most others can’t do. It’s common for others to take 2 to 3 days just to queue up.