"Life," the late rock star John Lennon once observed, "is what happens while you're busy making other plans."
So it is in logistics management, especially for cargoes that are not your run-of-the-mill, containerized variety.
"You have to think through every step of the way and develop contingency plans," said Steve Robinson, president of a Los Angeles-based freight forwarder and consolidator called Seaborne International, whose customers' shipments run the gamut from containerized goods to oil-rig components to retired U.S. Navy and Coast Guard vessels.
Research is essential, especially at the destination, according to Robinson and Michael Goldsmith, chairman, president and chief executive officer of KLS Logistics Services in Pleasanton, California. If you don't know the local regulations, culture, language and infrastructure where you do business, you're inviting trouble, they said.
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