A guide to sending freight to and from Canada: Ocean Freight

Shipping goods across the vast Canadian territories and across the American border, both to Alaska and the continental United States is a tricky task. Finding the best solution to solve your needs from end-to-end can be difficult and time consuming. There are many aspects of shipping including routing, packing, transportation customs clearance and documentation which need to be taken care of and consulting or using an ocean freight forwarding service provider is a necessity in order to manage the timely and safe delivery of goods.
Shipping Aspects
For the timely transportation of goods, a freight forwarding company maintains a network of transporters and clearance agents all over Canada for timely end-to-end shipping. Transportation across Canada and internationally may easily involve a multitude of transporters from Canadian involved in trucking, railway and air cargo other than shipments to and from ocean, river and lake cargo ports. Such a vast system of transportation with the many carriers involved requires freight forwarding services which find you the quickest and most cost effective routes with respect to your requirements in relation to destination, time and goods quantity / weight. Other aspects include insurance, container management (selection, loading, offloading and other logistic management services).
Choosing containers according to your business and transportation needs is an important aspect of shipping via waterways and ocean routes. The following are the types of services offered by freight forwarding companies and transporters to best fit your requirements.
- Transportation services and Import/export Licensing services
- Customs clearance and Entry processing
- Container loading and logistics management; FCL (full cargo containers)/LCL (less than container load)/ NCL (non-containerized loads)
- Documentation: LCs (Letters of credit-analysis and negotiations), B/L, commercial invoice, certificates of origin, insurance, and other documents for the clear at home-port /destination-port customs (e.g. Inspection certificates etc)
- End-to-end delivery coordination and Warehouse to Warehouse insurance/ all risk insurance
Canadian Shipping Facts
According to statistical surveys taken in 2006, the capability of Canadian ports in terms of annual cargo tonnage capacity is mentioned as under;
- All Canadian maritime ports combined handled more than 466 million metric tons of cargo
- Ports handled more than 3.9 million containers (20 foot equivalent), with a tonnage of about 33.0 million metric tons which signified an annual growth of about 4% during the peak recession period.
- Canadian ports handles up to 204 metric tons of cargo to and from international destinations other than the US.
- The largest port in Canada, Port of Vancouver, handled more than 80 million tons of internationally shipped ocean cargo
- Cargo to and from the United States was at 130 million metric tons of which nearly 85 million tons were shipped from Canada to destinations within the US. This traffic contributed to about 40% of international maritime shipping to and from Canada
The following is a list of maritime cargo ports in Canada and their locations;
Sea ports
Botwood, Newfoundland and Labrador, Port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Melford, Nova Scotia, Saint John, New Brunswick, Sept-Iles, Quebec, St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Churchill, Manitoba, Fraser Port, British Columbia, Port of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Surrey, British Columbia, Port of Vancouver, British Columbia, Victoria, British Columbia.
Inland Lake ports
Hamilton, Ontario, Kingston, Ontario, Port of Montreal, Nanticoke, Ontario, Oshawa, Ontario, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Port of Toronto, Ontario, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
River Ports
Montreal, Quebec, Quebec City, Quebec, Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, Becancour, Quebec.
References:
Wikipedia: Shipping
www[dot]dolliffco[dot]com/freight.html
Shipping in Canada by Statistics Canada