In January 2016 the NVOCC industry saw some major changes in South Africa.

News broke that Vanguard had bought out ILA. The result being that Vanguard reduced their South African brands from four to two.

As a result of these changes USA Freight Forwarders took on a new dimension having secured many loyal customers over the past 24 years.  In conjunction with Thrutainers we formed partnership agreements, together with Carotrans International, USA who have been operating in the RSA for 22 years.  When analyzing the SA situation, the CEO of Carotrans, Greg Howard, referred to these changes as “a jigsaw puzzle falling into place”.

Thrutainers/Carotrans also share common partners in Europe, China, Australia and the Middle East. These overseas partners are consigning their export containers to Thrutainers.  Similarly, Thrutainers are consigning their export containers to those destinations.

Carotrans with their vast USA network (14 freight receiving stations in the USA) and their export trade to other areas have time, volume contracts for their FCL traffic both on the direct and trans-shipment services. Carotrans currently offer a weekly LCL (consolidations) service from Newark and Charleston into the four major ports in SA.

For some reason the South African importer and freight forwarder have often found the USA a complexed country with regard to seafreight. This, in some aspects, is true, e.g it is vital that the trucks moving from depot to port of loading run regularly and are packed to capacity. Carotrans USA regularly visit SA and are aware of the demands of the South African importer. In addition, from an SA perspective, INCO terms, e.g. FOB are generally interpreted as FOB factory, as opposed to FOB port.

Despite the volatile exchange rate in recent months, USA Freight Forwarders are proud of the fact that we’ve managed to ride the storm and continue to offer competitive rates, a personalized and dedicated service to our customers.

We are pleased to bring Phillip Seoka on board. Phillip has a 10-year association with Carotrans and joined USA Freight as Operations Manager in February 2016.