By Andy Wang     Photo：CANVA

1. From a Forwarder’s View: The Last Mile Is Underrated Not Because It’s Hard, but Because It Looks “Too Ordinary”

For most companies that are just starting out in cross-border B2B, the first conversation with a forwarder naturally focuses on the earlier legs: freight rates, sailings or flights, customs risks, how to prepare documents, and whether the shipment will be held at the border.

These are indeed the most visible parts of international logistics, and they’re the core skills forwarders work with every day.

But if we look back from the perspective of a freight forwarder, many of the experiences that really give companies a headache don’t happen at sea or at the airport. They happen in that final little stretch: the cargo has arrived in the destination country, customs clearance went fine, and then everything gets stuck at the step of “how do we actually get this into the customer’s premises?”

The consignee is usually a factory, warehouse, assembly center, store or distributor. They don’t see how well you arranged the international leg. What they remember is that day on site: did the timing feel smooth, could the truck actually get in, was unloading arranged properly or not? You can get 90% of the journey right, but if something goes wrong in the last 10% on the last mile, the overall experience still feels compromised.

2. In Cross-Border B2B, the Last Mile Isn’t Just Another Leg – It’s What Brings Your Goods into the Customer’s Daily Operations

If we had to draw a simple line between the two:

The international leg gets the cargo into the country.
The last mile brings the cargo into someone else’s daily work.

The international segment is more like “systems engineering”: bookings, consolidation, stuffing containers, the voyage or flight, customs clearance, hubs, destination warehouses. There are clear SOPs, document formats and customs rules. Forwarders design routes, manage timelines and handle exceptions in this part of the chain.

The last mile is a different world. When the driver shows up, they deal with the security guard, the receiving clerk, the on-site supervisor. The delivery location has its own rules: what time of day trucks can enter, what size of vehicle is allowed, whether the unloading bay is at the front or the back, whether an appointment is required, whether there is a forklift or tail-lift available, whether they happen to be doing stocktake or a big clean-up that day.

None of this appears in a sailing schedule or customs code. It only exists in the daily habits of each site.

For an international forwarder, this part is often: finding the right local trucking or delivery partner, and using the conditions you and your customer provide to connect that last piece.

You don’t need to call local trucking companies yourself. But the information you provide directly determines how smooth that last stretch will be.

So the last mile is not just “send a truck and deliver.” It’s about whether the forwarder can connect the information between the international leg and the local site, and see where the risks really are.

3. Why Does the Last Mile Go Wrong More Often Than You Expect?

If you cover up the company names and country names, a lot of what happens on the ground looks surprisingly similar:

Sometimes the truck arrives at the factory gate on time, but security says the plant is doing other internal work today and trucks can’t enter, so the delivery has to be pushed to the next day.

Sometimes the cargo has reached the warehouse, but the receiving window has already closed, so the staff can only say “we’ll unload tomorrow.”

Sometimes the address on the document is correct, but the actual unloading entrance is on the other side of the building, and the driver spends a long time at the wrong door, making phone calls and losing time.

Sometimes the cargo is very long or very heavy and really needs a forklift or tail-lift, but on that particular day there is no manpower or equipment available, so the delivery has to be rescheduled.

On the front line, it’s the forwarder coordinating between the local carrier and the receiving site who deals with these situations.
But the delayed lead time, the extra costs, and the impression that the customer remembers all come back to you.

If you abstract these cases, you can see a common pattern:

Most last-mile problems do not come from “being unable to deliver.”
They come from “not having clarified the critical information at the beginning.”

The shipper doesn’t really know how the receiving site works day to day.
The consignee is just doing things the way they always do and never thought to spell it out.
Everyone quietly assumes “it probably won’t go wrong this time.”

That’s why this final stretch is often where all those “it should be fine” assumptions turn into real problems.

4. As a B2B Shipper, You Only Need to Understand Three Things—No More, No Less

The good news is: you don’t need to become an expert dispatcher or study every country’s road regulations.

From a forwarder’s point of view, if you can get three things right, the last mile will be much more stable.

1. You Are the Only One Who Can Describe What the Receiving Site Is Really Like

No one knows your customer better than you do. Is the receiving site in an industrial zone or a city center? Is there gate control? What times of day can they receive? Do trucks need to call ahead before entering? Can large vehicles get in? Is the site usually run with only a handful of people on duty?

If you don’t say any of this, the forwarder and the local carrier simply won’t know.

Your job is not to dispatch trucks yourself. Your job is to spend a few extra minutes explaining how your customer normally receives cargo, so we have enough to design the last mile properly.

2. You Know Better Than Anyone Where Your Cargo Is “Annoying” for the Site

Whether something is hazardous or not is one thing. More often, what makes life hard on site is the size, weight and shape of the cargo.

For example: long pieces that are hard to maneuver around corners, heavy pieces that can’t be offloaded without a forklift, outer cartons that are easy to break so people are nervous about handling them.

You don’t need to send engineering drawings. Plain language is enough: “This batch is quite long and heavy; it’s much safer with a forklift or tail-lift,” or “these cartons are relatively soft, so please avoid dropping or throwing them.”

Your job is to describe honestly. Our job is to take that information and talk to the local carrier about what kind of vehicle and handling is appropriate.

3. Be Clear What “Arrival” Actually Means in Your Promise to the Customer

In daily conversation, one of the most common sentences is: “Deliver by the end of the month.”

But that phrase means different things to different roles:

• To logistics, it may mean “arrive at the destination warehouse by month-end.”
• To the consignee, it may be understood as “by month-end the cargo will be inside our facility and ready for us to work with.”

If this definition isn’t aligned at the start, the last mile becomes a hotspot for misunderstandings.

Understanding the last mile is not about timing things down to the minute. It’s about realizing that arrival at the port is not the finish line. The real finish line is when the customer can physically receive the cargo and start using it.

5. In the Forwarder’s Role: What Do We Actually Do, and What Should You Still Decide?

In cross-border B2B, the forwarder is essentially the orchestrator:

We connect you and your customer on one side, and the overseas warehouse, terminal and local trucking or delivery partners on the other.

What sits with your forwarder and local partners is the whole block of operational coordination:
which local carrier to choose, how to allocate trucks, how to plan routes, what to do in case of traffic or disruptions, whether to consolidate deliveries, how to track and report back.

All of that belongs to the professional day-to-day work. We can handle it for you. You don’t need to watch every single truck.

But there are a few things that must be defined on your side before we can truly protect that last mile for you:

• The real constraints at the receiving site: time windows, access rules, equipment on site.
• The timing and flexibility you’ve promised your customer: whether early or late deliveries are acceptable, and in which situations they absolutely are not.
• The physical reality and potential risks of the cargo: dimensions, weight, whether it’s palletized, and whether it needs special care.

The most stable setup is not “hand everything to the forwarder and forget about it.”
It’s you providing complete conditions, and us designing and executing a solid local plan based on those conditions.

6. If You’re Only Now Paying Attention to the Last Mile, Three Extra Pieces of Information on Your Next Shipment Are Enough

Earlier we talked about the three things you need to understand. If you’re only now starting to focus on the last mile, that’s perfectly fine. From your next shipment onward, just deliberately add three pieces of information and you’ll already be better prepared than most first-time cross-border shippers.

You don’t have to rewrite all your processes, and there’s no need to feel bad about what happened in the past.

From the next shipment onward, simply adding these three blocks of information will already put you far ahead of the average first-timer:

First, ask clearly how the consignee normally receives cargo.
Receiving times, vehicle limits, where unloading actually happens, whether appointments are required, who the on-site contact is. You don’t need to write a report. A few clear sentences are enough for the forwarder to use as a “user manual” for designing the last mile.

Second, describe in plain language what the site needs to be careful about with this specific shipment.
For example: “Everything is on pallets, so a forklift is essential,” “each piece weighs a few dozen kilos, so they may need two people to handle them,” “the cartons stack fine, but they really shouldn’t get damp.” This kind of information is far more useful than just a product name.

Third, when you discuss lead times, align with your forwarder on whether your date is ‘arrival at port’ or ‘arrival into the customer’s facility’.
Once that is clear, we’ll treat “the time you promised your customer” as the real target when we arrange the sailing, customs and last-mile connection.

All three of these are about information, not operations.

The clearer you are, the more “protective moves” your forwarder can make between the international leg and the last mile.

7. Conclusion: The Last Mile Is How You Are Seen on the Ground

In cross-border B2B, you and your customer are usually separated by time zones, languages and screens. They don’t see how you negotiated rates, how carefully you booked space, or how much effort went into preparing documents. What stays in their memory is often just a few moments at their door: whether the driver knows who to ask for, whether the packaging looks solid, whether unloading goes smoothly or gets stuck, and whether people work together when something goes wrong or simply point fingers.

To you, that’s called “last-mile delivery.” To them, it may simply be the answer to: “Is this a company we want to work with in the long term?”

As a forwarder, we stand at the front line, connecting the international leg with what happens locally. You don’t need to chase trucks, schedule drivers or handle every conversation at the gate. But you can decide whether the last mile looks and feels like “everything is under control.”

You do that by choosing to share a bit more about the reality on site, to explain more clearly what is special about the cargo, and to define the key milestones at the very beginning. The rest can be handed over to professionals to design and execute.

Once you stop treating the last mile as “something someone will sort out later” and instead manage it as a core part of the customer experience, cross-border logistics stops being about luck and coincidence. It becomes a supply chain where you can say, with confidence: “We know what we’re doing, and we know how to get the cargo properly into your hands.”

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