Forwarder

A freight forwarder arranges carriage and ancillary services on behalf of a shipper, booking space, preparing documents, and coordinating multimodal moves, without necessarily taking on carrier liability. Acting as agent, the forwarder’s exposure is governed by its standard trading conditions, often the FIATA model conditions; acting as principal or NVOCC, it assumes carrier responsibility. The FIATA suite of documents (FBL, FCR, FCT, FWR) standardizes the forwarder’s undertakings across jurisdictions.