UPS has completed the rollout of UPS Trade Direct Air and Ocean services to facilitate export shipments from the United States and Canada to Europe, the carrier said yesterday.
UPS Trade Direct streamlines the supply chain by making it easy to move goods through customs that are destined for multiple locations but transported in one shipment. Trade Direct eliminates the need for client distribution centers in the receiving country for breaking down freight shipments, thus minimizing handling and carrying costs.
This expansion follows deployment of the service in 2004 along other major routes. UPS launched Trade Direct services outbound from Europe to the United States in January 2005 as well as inbound from Asia to Europe in June 2005. A ground cross-border service also is available among the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Here's how Trade Direct works: Goods bound for Europe are packaged individually, labeled for delivery and then combined into one freight shipment. After moving by plane or ship, the goods clear customs as a unit. That unit is then separated back into individual parcels or less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments, bypassing costly warehouse stops, and placed directly into the UPS small package system or into an LTL trucking line for final delivery.
As UPS handles the goods throughout this process, customers know where their shipments have last been scanned via the carrier's tracking and shipping notification technology.
Melissa Campanelli covers postal news, CRM and database marketing for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
