Logistics
from Zero

What logistics actually means

You will learn what the word means and what people in this industry are really paid to do.

Logistics is the work of getting goods from where they are made to where they are needed — at the right time, in the right condition, for a sensible cost.

That sounds simple. It is not, because three things are always pulling against each other:

• Speed — how fast the goods arrive
• Cost — how much the journey costs
• Reliability — how certain you are that it will arrive when promised

You can usually have two of them properly. Fast and reliable is expensive. Cheap and reliable is slow. Cheap and fast is unreliable. Almost every decision in this industry is a choice between those three, made on behalf of someone else's business.

What the job actually involves

People imagine logistics is about trucks and warehouses. Most logistics jobs involve very little of either. A typical day is:

• Answering questions about where things are
• Filling in and checking paperwork
• Booking space with transport companies
• Working out what a journey will cost
• Fixing things that have gone wrong

The last one takes the most time. It is also the part that clients pay for, and the part that makes someone good at this job rather than merely present.

From factory to front door: the full journey

You will learn the complete path goods take, step by step, so you can picture any shipment.

Almost every international shipment follows the same nine steps. Learn this sequence and you will always know roughly where a shipment is and what happens next.

1. The goods are made and packedAt a factory. They are put into boxes, then usually stacked onto a pallet — a flat wooden base that lets a forklift lift the whole stack at once.
2. A truck collects themFrom the factory to a port or airport. This short leg is called origin haulage.
3. Export paperwork is doneThe government of the country the goods are leaving checks what is going out. This is export clearance.
4. The goods are loadedInto a steel container for sea, or onto a pallet shaped to fit an aircraft.
5. The long journey happensBy ship, plane, train or road. This is the main carriage — the longest part in distance, and often not the longest part in time.
6. Arrival at the destination countryThe ship docks or the plane lands. The container is lifted off and placed in a stack at the port.
7. Import paperwork and taxesThe receiving government checks the goods and charges any tax due. This is customs clearance, and it is where shipments most often get stuck.
8. A truck collects the goodsFrom the port to the final address. This is destination haulage.
9. Delivery and signatureSomeone receives the goods and signs to say they arrived. That signature matters more than beginners expect.

The five players

You will learn the five parties involved in nearly every shipment and what each one does.

Every document you will ever see is these five names in different boxes. Learn them now and paperwork stops being confusing.

Why a forwarder exists at all

A buyer in Britain importing from Vietnam would otherwise have to find and manage a Vietnamese truck company, a Vietnamese customs agent, a shipping line, a British customs agent and a British truck company — in two languages, across seven time zones. The forwarder does all of it under one contract and one invoice.

Where money is made and where it leaks away

You will learn the main costs in a shipment and which ones are avoidable.

Beginners think the freight rate is the cost of shipping. It is often less than half of it.

ONE CONTAINER, ASIA TO UK - roughly where the cost sits

  Sea freight itself                    about 45%
  Port and terminal handling            about 12%
  Trucking at both ends                 about 20%
  Customs work and paperwork             about 5%
  Duty and taxes                        about 18%
                                        ---------
                                             100%

  AVOIDABLE COSTS THAT GET ADDED ON TOP
  - Storage, because paperwork was late
  - Demurrage, because the box was collected late
  - Re-delivery, because nobody was there to unload
  - Examination fees, because the description was vague
  - Extra duty, because the wrong product code was used

  None of these appear on any quote.
  All of them are caused by someone not doing something on time.

That second list is the important one. The costs on the first list are the price of doing business. The costs on the second list are mistakes, and preventing them is most of what a good logistics person actually contributes.

What a bad day looks like

You will learn what actually goes wrong, so none of it surprises you when it does.

This is an honest picture of the job. Nothing here is unusual; all of it happens regularly.

• A shipment is rolled. The ship sailed without your container because the vessel was full. Your cargo waits a week for the next one.
• Customs holds the goods. They want more information, or they have selected the container for physical inspection. You cannot hurry this.
• The truck cannot deliver. The site is closed, or has no forklift, or the driver has run out of legal driving hours.
• The paperwork is wrong. The weight on one document does not match another, and everything stops until it is fixed.
• Goods arrive damaged. Someone must work out who is responsible and whether a claim will succeed.
• The customer is angry. Often about something entirely outside your control.

What separates good from bad in these moments

1. Find out what is actually trueBefore telling anyone anything. Half of all reported problems turn out to be different from the first description.
2. Tell the customer earlyEven when you do not yet have a solution. Customers forgive delays. They do not forgive finding out late.
3. Offer options, not apologies"We can do A, B or C" is useful. "I'm so sorry" repeated four times is not.
4. Write down what happenedWhile it is fresh. You will need it if there is a claim, and you will learn from it if there is not.

Fifty words you must know

You will learn the vocabulary used every day, grouped so it is easy to remember.

The goods themselves

The journey

Containers and loads

Paperwork

Money

Who does what in a shipping office

You will learn the common job roles, what each one does, and which suits different people.

Where most people start

Operations is the usual entry point, and it is the best one. You touch every part of the business, meet every other department, and learn how the whole thing fits together. Almost everyone senior in freight started there.

Reading a job advert and knowing if you can do it

You will learn to decode logistics job adverts and judge whether to apply.

Logistics adverts are written in shorthand. Here is what the common phrases actually mean.

What employers actually screen for in junior roles

For entry-level positions, most employers care far more about reliability, clear communication and willingness to learn than about industry knowledge. The technical content can be taught. Turning up, writing a clear email and admitting a mistake early cannot.

How a shipping office runs, hour by hour

You will learn the rhythm of a working day so your first one is not a surprise.

08:00  Check overnight emails from origin offices in Asia.
       They have been working while you slept - anything urgent
       will be at the top of the inbox.

08:30  Morning check of live shipments. Anything arriving today?
       Anything that should have moved yesterday and did not?
       Build the day's problem list before the phone starts.

09:00  Phones open. Customer queries begin. Bookings come in.

10:00  Chase documents for shipments clearing this week.
       This is the most valuable hour of your day and the
       easiest one to let slide.

11:00  File customs entries. Handle any queries from the broker.

12:30  Lunch, usually interrupted.

13:30  Quoting. New enquiries need rates, which need carrier
       replies, which take time - start early enough to send today.

15:00  European offices start closing. Anything needing a reply
       from the continent must go now.

16:00  Confirm tomorrow's collections and deliveries.
       Check nothing is at risk of missing a cut-off.

17:00  Update customers proactively. One line each on anything
       that has moved or not moved.

17:30  Write tomorrow's problem list before you leave.
       Asia comes online overnight - leave them clear instructions.

The two habits that matter

• The morning list. Fifteen minutes spent identifying what is at risk today prevents most afternoon emergencies.
• The end-of-day update. Telling customers what happened, before they ask, is the single behaviour that separates forwarders clients stay with from ones they replace.

Road freight

You will learn the common vehicle types and what each can legally carry.

Full load or shared

• Full truck load (FTL) — you pay for the whole vehicle. It goes direct. Fastest and simplest.
• Groupage / part load (LTL) — you share with other customers. Cheaper, slower, more handling, more chance of damage.

Access matters more than beginners expect

A 44-tonne articulated lorry is about 16.5 metres long. It cannot turn into a narrow residential street, reverse up a steep drive, or unload without space. Before booking a delivery, you must know whether the site can physically take the vehicle and whether anyone there can unload it.

Sea freight: how a container crosses an ocean

You will learn what actually happens to a container between factory and destination port.

Sea freight carries the overwhelming majority of world trade by volume. It is slow, cheap and remarkably reliable.

1. An empty container is deliveredTo the factory, on a truck. The factory loads it and fits a numbered seal.
2. The container goes to the portWhere it joins a stack of thousands of others, waiting for its ship.
3. Cranes load the shipA large container ship carries many thousands of containers, stacked above and below deck.
4. The voyageAsia to Europe typically takes around 30 to 40 days. Ships travel at a steady speed — going faster burns disproportionately more fuel, so they rarely do.
5. Possible transhipmentOn some routes the container is moved to a second ship at a hub port. This adds time and a little risk.
6. Arrival and dischargeCranes lift it off into another stack.
7. Customs, then collectionOnce cleared, a truck collects it and delivers to the final address.

Air freight: speed, cost and limits

You will learn how air freight works and why it is never as fast as the flight time suggests.

Air freight is the fastest option and by far the most expensive per kilo — often several times the cost of sea.

Where air cargo travels

Most air cargo does not fly on cargo aircraft. It travels in the hold of ordinary passenger flights, underneath the passengers' luggage. This is called belly capacity, and it means air freight space depends on where people are flying.

Why the flight is the short part

A flight might be eleven hours. Door-to-door is usually four to six days, because of:

• Delivery to the forwarder's warehouse near the airport
• Building the cargo onto aircraft pallets
• Security screening, which every piece must pass
• An acceptance deadline several hours before departure
• Breaking the cargo down at the other end
• Customs, then trucking

What cannot easily fly

• Very heavy or oversized items
• Many dangerous goods, or they need special handling — aerosols, perfume, batteries
• Anything where the freight cost would exceed the value of the goods

Rail and intermodal

You will learn where rail fits and what "intermodal" means.

Intermodal means using more than one mode for a single journey, with the goods staying in the same container throughout. Truck to train to truck — the box moves, the contents are never touched.

What rail is good at

• Long overland distances where road would need many drivers and many hours
• Heavy, bulky cargo — minerals, steel, timber, vehicles
• Lower emissions per tonne than road
• Predictable scheduled services on established corridors

What rail is poor at

• It cannot reach most addresses — a truck is always needed at each end
• Less frequent departures than road
• Route availability depends on infrastructure and, on international corridors, on politics

Courier and express

You will learn how the parcel business differs from freight, and when to use it.

Courier and express companies run their own integrated networks — their own vehicles, aircraft, sorting hubs and customs processes. That integration is why they can offer door-to-door delivery in a few days with a tracking number that actually works.

Where the crossover sits

Below roughly 100 kg, express is often cheaper and always simpler. Above roughly 300 kg, freight is usually considerably cheaper. In between, it genuinely depends — check both.

Choosing a mode: a simple decision table

You will learn a practical method for recommending a transport mode.

Ask four questions in this order. They will get you to the right answer most of the time.

1. How much is it worth per kilo?Divide the value by the weight. Very high value per kilo makes air reasonable, because freight is a small share of the total. Very low value per kilo makes air absurd.
2. What happens if it is late?Nothing? Choose cheap. A production line stops or a season is missed? Choose fast.
3. How big and heavy is it?Some cargo cannot fly. Some cannot go on a normal trailer.
4. Where is it going?Within a region, road usually wins outright. Between continents, it is sea or air.

What happens inside a warehouse

You will learn what a warehouse actually does beyond storing things.

A warehouse is not a storage cupboard. It is a sorting machine. Goods arrive in large quantities of few products, and leave in small quantities of many products. Everything inside exists to make that conversion work.

The main areas

• Goods-in / receiving — where deliveries are unloaded and checked
• Storage — racking where stock sits until needed
• Picking area — fast-moving items kept accessible
• Packing — orders assembled and boxed
• Dispatch / goods-out — completed orders staged for collection
• Returns — goods coming back, which need checking and often repackaging

Equipment you will hear named

• Pallet truck — manual, moves pallets along the floor
• Forklift — lifts pallets, including into high racking
• Racking — the steel shelving; pallets are stored in defined locations
• Scanner — reads barcodes so the system knows what moved where
• Loading bay / dock — raised platform level with a lorry bed

Goods in, put-away, pick, pack, dispatch

You will learn the five core warehouse processes and where errors creep in.

1. Goods inThe delivery arrives. Someone counts it, checks it against the paperwork, and records any damage or shortage before signing. This is the most important moment in the whole warehouse, because once you sign clean, proving a problem later is very hard.
2. Put-awayStock is moved to a storage location and the system records where. If the location is recorded wrongly, the stock effectively no longer exists — it is in the building but nobody can find it.
3. PickAn order comes in; someone collects the items from their locations. Picking the wrong item or the wrong quantity is the most common warehouse error.
4. PackItems are boxed, labelled and documented. Packing quality decides whether the goods survive the journey.
5. DispatchThe order is staged, loaded and recorded as gone, with proof of what left and when.

Stock counts and why they go wrong

You will learn why recorded stock and real stock differ, and how businesses keep them aligned.

Every warehouse has a number in the system and a number on the shelf, and they are never quite the same. The gap is called stock discrepancy or shrinkage.

Where the gap comes from

• Picking errors — the wrong item taken, so two products are now both wrong
• Receiving errors — booked in as 100 when 96 arrived
• Damage not recorded — a broken item binned without a system entry
• Misplaced stock — put away in the wrong location, so it appears missing
• Theft — real, but a smaller cause than most people assume
• Returns not processed — goods physically back but never booked in

Two ways to count

• Full stocktake — count everything, usually once or twice a year. Accurate but requires stopping operations, which is expensive.
• Cycle counting — count a small section every day or week, so everything gets counted over a period. No shutdown, and problems are found within days instead of months.

Cross-docking and why it saves money

You will learn what cross-docking is and when it works.

Cross-docking means goods arrive at a facility and go straight back out on another vehicle, without being put into storage. They cross from the inbound dock to the outbound dock — hence the name.

Why it saves money

Storage costs money: rent, racking, the labour of putting away and picking again, and the capital tied up in stock sitting still. Cross-docking removes all of it. The goods spend hours in the building rather than weeks.

What it requires

• Accurate timing — inbound and outbound vehicles must line up
• Known demand — you must already know where the goods are going
• Reliable suppliers — a late inbound delivery means an outbound vehicle leaves empty or waits
• Good information — you need to know exactly what is on the inbound vehicle before it arrives

Reading a stock report

You will learn to read a stock report and spot what needs attention.

STOCK REPORT - illustrative                        18 Sep 2026

 SKU      Description            Free  Alloc  On PO  Loc      Note
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
 HW-1042  Ceramic mug, white      840    120  1,200  A12-03
 HW-1043  Ceramic mug, blue        22     60      0  A12-04   <<< short
 HW-2210  Glass tumbler, 300ml    310     45    600  B04-11
 HW-3301  Serving board, oak        0      0      0  C09-02   <<< dead
 HW-3302  Serving board, walnut   118     12    240  C09-03

 SKU    a unique code for one product. "Stock keeping unit."
 Free   available to sell right now
 Alloc  allocated - promised to orders not yet dispatched
 On PO  on a purchase order, ordered but not yet arrived
 Loc    the storage location in the warehouse

 WHAT THIS REPORT IS TELLING YOU
 HW-1043  22 free but 60 already promised. You are 38 SHORT and
          nothing is on order. Someone must act today.
 HW-3301  Nothing free, nothing promised, nothing coming.
          Either discontinued, or forgotten. Worth asking.
 HW-1042  Healthy - good cover and replenishment on the way.

The one calculation worth knowing

Free stock minus allocated stock tells you whether you can meet what you have already promised. If it is negative, someone is going to be disappointed, and the sooner you spot it the more options you have.

Gross, net and tare weight

You will learn the three weights and calculate them yourself.

• Net weight — the goods alone, with nothing else
• Tare weight — the packaging alone: cartons, pallet, wrapping
• Gross weight — net plus tare. This is what the carrier handles and what appears on transport documents

Gross = Net + Tare

ONE PALLET OF PACKAGED GLASSWARE

  40 cartons, each holding 9.2 kg of product
  Each empty carton weighs                    0.4 kg
  The wooden pallet weighs                   22.0 kg
  Shrink wrap                                 1.5 kg

  NET    40 x 9.2                       =   368.0 kg
  TARE   (40 x 0.4) + 22.0 + 1.5        =    39.5 kg
  GROSS  368.0 + 39.5                   =   407.5 kg

  FOR 18 IDENTICAL PALLETS
  Net    18 x 368.0                     = 6,624 kg
  Tare   18 x  39.5                     =   711 kg
  Gross  18 x 407.5                     = 7,335 kg

  The carrier books 7,335 kg. Not 6,624 kg.
  The difference - 711 kg - is real weight on a real vehicle.

Pallets: the sizes that matter

You will learn the standard pallet sizes and why the wooden pallet itself can stop a shipment.

Height matters as much as footprint

A pallet's footprint is standard; its loaded height is not. Typical loaded heights run from about 1.2 to 2.2 metres. Height decides how many fit in a container, whether the load can be double stacked, and whether it fits under the roof of a particular vehicle.

The wood itself is regulated

Solid wood packaging used in international trade generally must be heat treated to kill pests, and marked with a stamp showing it complies with the international standard known as ISPM 15. Untreated or unmarked wood can be refused entry — and note that this is about the pallet, not the goods. A perfectly compliant shipment can be stopped because of what it is sitting on.

Container sizes and what fits inside

You will learn the standard containers and the surprising fact about weight.

The fact that surprises everyone

A 40ft container holds about twice the volume of a 20ft, but often carries slightly less weight. The bigger container weighs more empty, and road weight limits cap the total for the whole vehicle.

So the rule is:

• Heavy, dense cargo — tiles, stone, liquids, machinery — goes in a 20ft. It will hit the weight limit long before filling the space.
• Light, bulky cargo — cushions, packaging, empty containers, clothing — goes in a 40ft high cube. It will fill the space long before troubling the weight limit.

Measuring cargo correctly, first time

You will learn exactly how to measure a shipment so your figures match the carrier's.

1. Measure as packed, ready to shipNot the product, not the carton — the finished pallet with everything on it.
2. Include the pallet in the heightA pallet is about 15 cm tall. Measure from the floor to the highest point.
3. Include any overhangIf cartons stick out past the pallet edge, measure to the widest point. The carrier will.
4. Round up to the nearest centimetreCarriers do. Optimistic rounding just delays the cost.
5. Record weight as grossGoods plus all packaging plus the pallet.
6. Note stackabilityCan another pallet sit on top? A flat, rigid top surface usually means yes. Domed lids, soft goods and fragile items mean no.

Calculating volume

Volume in m³ = length × width × height, all in metres

A pallet 1.2 m × 1.0 m × 1.6 m = 1.92 m³. Ten such pallets = 19.2 m³.

CARGO DETAILS - the format that avoids every follow-up question

  Number of pallets     8
  Pallet type           Euro (1200 x 800 mm)
  Dimensions each       120 x 100 x 155 cm  (L x W x H, as packed,
                        including pallet, including overhang)
  Gross weight each     385 kg
  Total gross weight    3,080 kg
  Total volume          14.88 m3
  Stackable             NO - domed cartons on top layer
  Pallets ISPM 15       Yes, heat treated and marked
  Dangerous goods       No
  Special handling      None

Send this once and you will not be asked anything else.