Why Switching Forwarders Feels Hard (and When It’s Worth It)

There are signs when the relationship with the forwarder isn’t working. Answers are slow when things go wrong, charges come out of nowhere, and stakeholder updates are hard to come by. Of course, switching forwarders can be scary, particularly when you consider the new SOPs and contacts and the big elephant in the room: uncertainty.

But that fear is what keeps logistics teams in relationships that cost them more than they think. Unforeseen charges, wasted hours, and operational drag that builds up quarter after quarter are just some examples of the actual cost. The switch doesn’t have to be a gamble, though. With Laufer, you have an onboarding model built around SOP discipline and data sharing through PeerPLUS, our end-to-end visibility platform. The payoff is real.

Your current forwarder has institutional knowledge, even if they aren’t doing a good job. They have data on past shipments and are familiar with the contacts and the quirks of your preferred ports. It feels like starting over when you walk away from that, and that is a risk shippers are often hesitant to take.

And then there are the “what ifs.” What if shipments are delayed during the changeover? What if the onboarding process takes so long that the team loses weeks of work? What if the new forwarder is worse, with a better pitch but the same problems?

All of that makes sense, but the “what ifs” can be easier to deal with than people think. A survey by FreightWaves/Logixboard found that 46% of shippers have switched freight forwarders because another offered better technology. That’s almost half of the market that has already made the switch and come out the other side.

Sadly, when a freight forwarder relationship has been bad for so long, the costs start to feel normal. It could be unnecessary demurrage fees for containers that are stuck at the port because no one flagged the milestone. Or documentation mistakes that delay clearance by two to three days. Sometimes it’s the airfreight that has to happen just because the booking wasn’t handled properly.

The financial cost is one thing. But the time cost is probably worse, especially for lean teams. If you’re in charge of logistics with two or three people and hundreds of containers a year, every hour counts. And a forwarder who doesn’t talk to you in advance will rob you of those hours.

Think about how much time your team spends looking for updates on shipments that should have been sent to you automatically. Or going over requirements again that a more attentive partner would have written down after the first conversation.

Importantly, 74% of shippers say that service is more important than cost. Most logistics managers already know this in their gut. The issue is that no one puts a dollar figure on the hours wasted due to poor communication. If they had, the case for switching would have been made months ago.

When onboarding is done right, with clear SOPs and real data sharing from the start, the risk goes down to almost nothing.

Laufer makes SOP development a part of onboarding on purpose. We talk about how things will work during implementation so that, by the time the freight starts moving, both sides know exactly how the operation will work. That structure is what makes the change feel less like a free fall.

Data sharing means sending forecasts, order information, and shipment history electronically via EDI or API so the new forwarder understands the full operational context before the first shipment.

This is how PeerPLUS gives you actionable visibility right away. Milestone tracking, exception alerts, and custom reporting all depend on the system getting clean, up-to-date data. This way, your team has access to the information that helps them make decisions rather than just confirming what has already happened. Contact us today at Laufer to get started.