international transport documents

We have already disccused the means of transportation used in international trade, however there're some documents needed when transporting goods.

OCEAN: the most used document is the bill of lading (B/L). This document shows the owner of the goods; the amount of goods that have been or will be loaded to the ship, the weight of the goods and the destination. "The B/L can be:

1. relating to parties:
   

• straight B/L: only one person will be able to collect the goods at the destination even if he doesn't have the original document
  
• bearer B/L: the person that holds the original document will be considered the legal owner of the goods.
• B/L to order: the ownership of the goods can be transferred from one person to another

2. relating to the journey:

• direct B/L: directly form one port to another
• through B/L: the goods will pass form one ship to another in different ports till they get to the destination." 1

AIR: the most used document is the air waybill (AWB); It works just like the B/L "with the difference that the AWB cannot be negotiable" 2







RAIL: the most used documents are the rail consignment notes. "these documents are not negotiable with the cargo being placed at the disposal of the designated consignee upon proof of identity" 3




TRANSPORTATION COMPANIES: in companies like fedex a postal declaration is used; It includes "the name and address of the consignee. A receipt is given by the postal authorities for all registered parcels" 4


1. took from http://www.undp.org/procurement/documents/undp-shipping-guide.pdf page 16-17 pdf
2. took from http://www.undp.org/procurement/documents/undp-shipping-guide.pdf page 19 pdf
3. took from http://www.undp.org/procurement/documents/undp-shipping-guide.pdf page 19 pdf
4. took from http://www.undp.org/procurement/documents/undp-shipping-guide.pdf page 19 pdf

Means of transportation

One of the most important matters in a trade is how are you going to deliver the products to the other person; acording to the geographical position or the costs you're are willing to afford for the completion of the operation it can be:

• by ship: this is the most used mean of transportation in the world due to it's low costs; It's based on the transport of the good by ocean from an exporter's port to the other country port. The most important disadvantage of this method is that is the slowest of all means of transportation
• 
  

• by air: this is the fastest mean of transportation but at the same time is the most expensive among them; using these transport can give an added value to the exported product but if It's not well handled it can become a burden for the company's assets

• by truck: mostly used when It's a trade between countries that share a territorial border, It can be a very effective and cheap way of transport if is well employed. When using this mean of transport you can rent all the truck's cargo volume (TL) or just a part of the truck volume (LTL) acording to the amount of goods you're exporting

• by rail: this mean of transportation is not very used in our country; mostly because of the terrible state of the rails, but It's important to at lest mention it, after all It can be an effective way to transport good to a close country.

At the time of making a choice on which mean are you going to use It's important to take into consideration all the conditions of the trade; how much time do you have left for the delivery of the product?, which mean of transport is the most efficient for this particular bussiness?, how much added value do you want to give to your product?, how much do you want to invest in the safety of the product? (an air transport is safer than a ship transport), etc.

At the end, it's up to every operation which mean of transport suits it better.