By Paul Scott Abbott, AJOTThe challenges of moving lumber exports can be daunting, but specialized freight forwarders such as Mobile, AL-based TradeLanes Inc. are negotiating service contracts with carriers and engaging in other efforts to facilitate such shipments. “We have just seen an unbelievable change in what we’re doing,” said Chan Garrison, president of TradeLanes, a niche company he formed in 2004 with fellow shipping industry veteran Sandy Myers, president of Mobile-based ASF, Inc. Not only is a commodity that once moved predominantly as breakbulk now being shipped mostly in containers, but, according to Garrison and Myers, shipping industry changes are having an impact, especially upon lower-volume shippers. “It has become almost impossible for a small shipper out there on their own,” Garrison commented. Among the challenges, Myers cited the difficulties exporters can encounter when dealing with customer service functions that cost-conscious carriers may have outsourced to representatives in India or elsewhere. TradeLanes and ASF – each of which has about a dozen employees and handles a similar annual volume of between 12,000 and 14,000 40-foot-equivalent container units – have combined to ink service contracts with some two dozen container lines. The strong volumes allow customers to benefit from highly competitive freight rates. “We like to give our customers a menu of options,” Myers said. “Oftentimes, we give our customers more options than they might have been aware of.” Sometimes, a customer may be seeking the fastest transit time, if a shipment is particularly critical and/or if paying more for ocean transit will significantly speed the exporter getting paid for the goods, Myers noted. Other times, if the exporter is getting squeezed on price, the least expensive option may be the way to go. For some customers, the Mobile firms arrange everything from trucking or railing the freight, to the departure port, to the ocean transport, to delivery at destination, including all the associated paperwork, frequently allowing the exporter to avert the need for an overseas agent. For others, the firms only handle the port-to-port segment. Although the companies are headquartered in Mobile – the hometown of both Garrison and Myers – less than five percent of the firms’ overall volumes move out of the Alabama State Port Authority’s Port of Mobile. Both men said they are hoping that percentage will increase as Mobile begins to expand its container-handling facilities and concomitantly attracts more container carriers’ calls. Currently, most of the firms’ business moves through containerports such as Savannah, which offer weekly sailings to China aboard vessels belonging to several different container lines. “Clear advantages to containers” The trend toward containerizing lumber shipments has been spurred by declining containerized freight rates, particularly in lanes such as westbound trade from the United States to Asia, where volumes are significantly lower than in the eastbound direction. “With all the imports coming in from China, carriers are willing to substantially discount the return leg,” Garrison said. “This has been going on for seven or eight years and it’s just getting more prevalent. It plays into the US lumber exporters’ hands with freight rates.” Indeed, the fastest-growing segment of business for TradeLanes and ASF is now in imports of various goods, from parts, to electronics, to furniture, mostly from Asia. Myers said the firms “marry up the shipments for a true matchback,” utilizing the same container used to bring a Chinese consumer good to the United States for a shipment back to China of US lumber. Containerizing lumber shipments, as opposed to using the traditional breakbulk method, has brought adjunct benefits as well. “There are clear advantages to containers,” Myers said. “For example, pilferage is eliminated, and there is far less damage.” TradeLanes and ASF handle both hardwood and softwood lumbers for a c