Ask any DTC brand founder about their freight forwarder and you'll hear the same complaint: "I always have to chase them. They never proactively tell me anything."
Ask any freight forwarder about their DTC clients and you'll hear the mirror image: "They send me incomplete information across five different email threads and then wonder why things get delayed."
Both sides are right. And the problem isn't that freight forwarders are bad at their jobs or that brand founders are disorganized. The problem is that the communication channel — email — is fundamentally broken for the type of collaboration that freight forwarding requires.
How most brands find their freight forwarder
Most DTC brands don't find their freight forwarder through a careful evaluation process. They get a referral — from another importer, from their vendor in China, or from someone in their network who ships similar volumes. They get a quote, it seems reasonable, and the relationship starts.
This referral-based approach actually works well for finding a competent forwarder. The problem is what happens after the relationship starts. Because the introduction was informal, the working relationship stays informal. There's no defined communication protocol. No agreed-upon update cadence. No shared system for tracking shipment status. Just email, and whatever habits both sides fall into.
For the first few shipments, this is fine. You're shipping one or two containers a year. The forwarder sends you a booking confirmation, a bill of lading, and an arrival notice. You can keep track of it in your head.
It stops working when you're shipping multiple containers per year, each at different stages — one being booked, one on the water, one clearing customs. At that point, the informal email-based relationship becomes a source of constant friction.
The one-way communication problem
The single biggest frustration DTC brands have with their freight forwarders is that communication is one-way. You always have to initiate. You send an email asking for a status update. You wait. You follow up. You get a one-line reply. You ask a follow-up question. You wait again.
This isn't because your forwarder is ignoring you. It's because you're one of dozens — possibly hundreds — of clients they're managing simultaneously. They're juggling bookings, vessel schedules, customs paperwork, and warehouse coordination across many shippers. Proactively updating every client on every shipment isn't something their workflow supports, especially when the "update" is just "everything is on track."
The result is a communication pattern that drives both sides crazy. You feel like you're in the dark because you only hear from them when there's a problem or when you reach out first. They feel overwhelmed because every client is emailing them asking for updates that amount to "is my stuff still on the boat?"
What a good freight forwarder relationship actually looks like
The bar for freight forwarder communication is remarkably low in the DTC world, and most forwarders don't clear it. But the good ones — the ones worth keeping — do three things that set them apart.
They proactively update you without being asked. A good forwarder sends you a status update when something changes — when the booking is confirmed, when the container is loaded, when the vessel sails, when the estimated arrival date shifts. You shouldn't have to ask. If you're consistently initiating every communication, that's a signal the relationship needs recalibration.
They know your shipment schedule better than you do. A great forwarder is tracking your production timelines and reaching out to ask when goods will be ready — not waiting for you to tell them. They're aware of upcoming vessel schedules and flag potential conflicts before they become problems. They're thinking one shipment ahead, not just reacting to the current one.
They flag problems and offer solutions, not just report issues. When a vessel is delayed or a port is congested, a good forwarder doesn't just forward you the shipping line's notice. They tell you what it means for your timeline and what your options are — rebook on a different vessel, switch to a different port, adjust the delivery schedule. They're a logistics partner, not a message relay service.
If your current forwarder isn't doing at least the first of these three things, it's worth having a direct conversation about communication expectations. Most forwarders are willing to adjust — they just need to know what you expect, because many of their clients don't ask.
Why email makes everything worse
Even with a great forwarder, email creates structural problems that no amount of goodwill can fix.
The information is scattered across threads. Your booking confirmation is in one thread. The bill of lading is in another. The arrival notice goes to a different person on your team. The customs documentation is in a fourth thread. When you need to answer a simple question — "what's the status of my shipment?" — you're searching across multiple email threads to piece together the answer.
Version control doesn't exist. Your forwarder sends a booking with an estimated arrival of March 15. The vessel schedule changes and they send an updated arrival of March 22. But the update is buried in a reply chain, and your ops team is still working off the March 15 date. Nobody realizes the dates don't match until the goods don't show up when expected.
Handoffs between partners break down. Your forwarder needs the commercial invoice from your vendor. Your vendor needs the booking details from your forwarder. You're in the middle, forwarding emails between two parties who don't have direct visibility into each other's timelines. Every handoff is a potential delay because it depends on someone manually forwarding the right information at the right time.
Nothing is connected to the order. Your forwarder's emails exist in a completely separate universe from your vendor's emails, your QC inspector's reports, and your internal order tracking. There's no single place where you can see the full lifecycle of an order — from production through QC through shipping through delivery — because each partner is communicating through their own disconnected channel.
What actually needs to change
The fix isn't finding a better forwarder or writing more detailed emails. The fix is giving every partner in your supply chain — including your freight forwarder — a shared workspace where shipment status, documents, and communication are all connected to the same order.
When your freight forwarder can see that your goods have passed QC and are ready for pickup, they don't need you to email them. They already know. When they confirm a booking, the status updates automatically — your team doesn't need to ask. When the vessel schedule changes, the new arrival date is visible to everyone, not buried in one person's inbox.
This is the approach we built into Tackr. Every partner in the supply chain — vendors, QC inspectors, freight forwarders — has their own login and can see the orders they're involved in. The freight forwarder sees when goods hit the "Ready" stage and can start booking. When they update shipping details, the brand sees it immediately. No emails to chase. No status updates to request.
Your freight forwarder doesn't hate you. They hate the communication overhead that email forces on both of you. Give them a better way to work with you, and the relationship transforms.
About the Author
This article was written by The Tackr Team. Tackr is a supply chain collaboration platform for DTC brands that import goods from overseas. Every partner in your supply chain — including your freight forwarder — works inside one shared system.