List of Primary Ocean Freight Brokers

Primary Ocean Freight Brokers: Trustworthy primary ocean freight brokers include Maersk Sealand, Old Dominion Freight and United Parcel Service (UPS). Sealand and Maersk have been shipping ocean freight in 20, 40 and 48 foot containers since the inception of modern organized trucking in 1955.

United Parcel Service
A Sealand shipping container is loaded on to a truck chassis in the port.

United Parcel Service does not own any vessels, but maintains dependable reliable shipping schedules with major carriers networked through commercial distribution centers. UPS offers combinations of air and ocean freight shipping to combine savings of ocean shipping with speed of air shipping. UPS consolidates and forwards freight issuing its own bills of lading (list of contents) for your cargo on the ship and manifests (lists of contents) for your cargo in transit on land. UPS provides timely and accurate information to U.S. Customs and border guards, which prevents delays on the Canadian or Mexican borders and in customs on imports from other countries.

UPS Ocean Freight offers more global destinations than most ocean freight brokers to meet all shipping needs. UPS schedules and reserves space for shipments and is familiar with the import export requirements of most countries.

Old Dominion Freight
Old Dominion expanded in October 2010 into seven Chinese Ports.

Old Dominion Freight Line has port facilities and distribution services in the Caribbean, Europe, Eastern Europe, Central America and South America. In January 2010, Old Dominion moved from Los Angeles to Carson, California, which provides greater access to the port of Los Angeles and the port of Long Beach. Old Dominion provides less than load and full load one-to–five day ground freight services, second day service and next day service within 38 of the United States.

In October 2010, Old Dominion ocean freight expanded its service into Chinese ports of Dalian, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Ningbo, Qingdao, Xiamen and Xingang, in addition to its Hong Kong, Shanghai and Shenzhen/Yantian port facilities, opened in April 2009. The new Chinese port facilities allow Old Dominion to guarantee transit times and lower rates for shipping from China. The new ports cut 10 days out of Old Dominion’s transit time and lowered their rates.

Maersk International for Perishable Shippers

Freight containers, loaded on barges in the port, float inland to their final destinations.

In 1999, the A. P. Moller-Maersk Group bought Sealand’s international shipping business, resulting in Maersk Sealand. Maersk has 165 local offices in 127 different countries. Maersk International shipping owns more than 1,900,000 twenty-foot containers, which it uses to ship cargo worldwide.

Maersk will ship oil and gas in tankers and is already using alternative energy and fuel cells on ocean going vessels. Sealand International will ship live, dangerous, flammable, perishable cargo, vehicles and merchandise with full logistics services to manage your ocean freight. Sealand port operations dominate entire ports. Containers of ocean freight are numbered and inventoried by a computer system that knows the position of the container and more recently the specific detailed contents within the containers.