|
I too work for a 3PL, a small family-owned company with <20 employees. Our company deals with a few Fortune 500 companies and a couple of other smaller clients. Being a 3PL we can handle any aspect of the logistics chain but at the moment the majority of what we do involves maritime shipments, drayage as well as decent number of air shipments. About a year ago we were contracted to operate a warehouse on behalf of one of our clients so we're in that business now too. Our bread and butter is freight forwarding and raw materials sourcing. We're also a licensed NVOCC which makes up a small but growing portion of our revenue. In my role I focus primarily on legal compliance - I deal with customs clearance, tariff code classifications, as well as export controls (mostly BIS CCL for those in the know). I also frequently audit shipment paper trails to ensure brokers and other services providers are doing their jobs properly. However, being a small company I frequently am tasked with projects completely outside of my day-to-day work. Sometimes I'll be on the phone with suppliers getting quotes for various components one of our clients needs or speaking with a shipping line getting quotes on certain lanes and plenty of other random grunt work. We kind of unofficially specialize in getting cargo into and out of 'difficult' countries such as Venezuela, Brazil, India, Iraq and a few others. If you are looking to get into this industry 3PLs are a good place to start as you'll be exposed to many different components of the logistics industry. Pay in this industry generally isn't great (what the OP mentioned for starting salaries is pretty accurate) and you probably won't see any real money until you get into a managerial role. The industry can be very old fashioned or even a straight up luddite sometimes - lots of paperwork, filling out forms, checking lists, sending faxes, etc not to mention complying with myriad regulations both domestic and foreign. Most of the time the daily work is fairly clerical and tedious but you do have to deal with hilarious, bizarre and frustrating situations which tend to crop up more often than you'd think. Last year we had a situation where upon unlading in Rotterdam one of our clients' 40 footers was found to contain a stolen Mercedes buried in a pile of cranberries. We've had issues with truckers showing up at warehouses with empty containers to be stuffed only to find horrendously vile odors once the doors are opened. We've dealt with truckers who were arrested enroute with cargo in tow for DUI. Any problem you can think of probably has happened at least a couple times.
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2015 20:00
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 01:31 |
|