Our Services
Freight Services Engineered Around Your Cargo
Ocean, air, road, rail, courier and warehousing under one accountable team. We quote the whole journey rather than a single leg, we clear it ourselves, and we stay attached to the file until somebody signs for the goods.
One forwarder for the whole journey
Most freight problems are not transport problems. They are handover problems: the airline blames the trucker, the broker blames the shipper, and nobody owns the delay. Transatlantic Express is built to remove those seams. We control the collection, the main leg, the customs entry and the final mile on one file, with one reference number and one named specialist who answers to you.
That means the quote you receive already contains the parts other forwarders leave off — terminal handling, documentation, duty deferment, waiting time, residential surcharges. If a cost is genuinely unpredictable, we say so in writing and give you a ceiling. We would rather lose a booking on price than win it on an omission.
Since 2006 we have grown almost entirely on referral, moving groupage boxes for importers who needed somebody awake at 4am and, twenty years later, moving turbine sections, clinical trial kits and full retail seasons across 180 countries and 210 partner hubs.
- Single point of accountability from quote to final signature
- All-in landed pricing with surcharges disclosed up front
- Licensed in-house customs brokerage on both sides of the Atlantic
- Control tower staffed 24 hours a day, every day of the year
- Cargo insurance arranged at declared value, not a token limit
Core Services
Nine Ways We Move Your Freight
Every service below is one we operate and account for ourselves. Choose a mode, or tell us the deadline and the budget and let us build the routing.
Ocean Freight, FCL and LCL
Weekly protected space on forty trade lanes with fixed allocations, so your containers are not rolled the moment the market tightens.
- Dedicated FCL slots on twelve core lanes
- Consolidated LCL departures twice weekly
- Reefer, flat rack and out-of-gauge handling
- Origin cargo receipt and container photographs
Air Freight and Charter
Consolidations, back-to-back and next-flight-out capacity for cargo that cannot wait for a vessel, including full charter when the deadline justifies it.
- Deferred, standard and express airport-to-airport
- Known-consignor screening and secure build-up
- Temperature-controlled and dangerous goods lanes
- Charter brokerage for AOG and project moves
Road Haulage, FTL and LTL
Full and part loads across Europe and North America with cross-border compliance, tail lifts and timed deliveries built into the plan.
- Dedicated full loads with live driver tracking
- Groupage across nineteen European countries
- Tail lift, crane offload and two-person delivery
- Bonded movements under T1 and in-transit bonds
Rail Corridors
Lower-emission block trains for heavy, dense volumes between inland hubs and seaports, and across the Asia to Europe land bridge.
- Scheduled block trains and single-wagon service
- Inland container depot collection and return
- Roughly two thirds less CO2 than equivalent road
- Rail plus road combinations for final delivery
Express Courier
Same-day, next-day and next-flight-out service for time-critical parts, prototypes and legal documents, hand-carried where necessary.
- Same-day city and inter-city courier
- International express with customs pre-clearance
- On-board courier and hand-carry service
- Proof of delivery with photograph and signature
Warehousing and 3PL
Bonded and general storage, pick and pack, kitting and live inventory dashboards across 210 hubs, billed by what you actually use.
- Customs bonded and duty-suspended storage
- Pick, pack, kitting and light assembly
- Cycle counting with live stock visibility
- Overflow and seasonal peak capacity
Customs Brokerage and Compliance
Licensed brokers in-house rather than a subcontracted middleman, so classification questions get answered the same day.
- Import and export entries, both Atlantic coasts
- HS classification reviews and binding rulings
- Duty deferment, bonded transit and ATA carnets
- Audit-ready archive of every entry we file
Project and Out-of-Gauge Cargo
Heavy lift, abnormal loads and multi-modal project moves planned with route surveys, lift plans and method statements before anything moves.
- Route surveys, permits and police escorts
- Crane and lift plan engineering
- Break bulk, RoRo and heavy lift vessel space
- On-site supervision and photographic reporting
E-commerce Fulfilment and Returns
Direct-to-consumer despatch, duty-paid delivery and a returns process your customers do not complain about.
- Marketplace and platform integrations
- Duty and tax paid delivered pricing
- Branded packing and insert handling
- Returns triage, refurbishment and restock
Sector Desks
Specialists, Not Generalists With A Price List
Freight rules change by industry. Our desks are staffed by people who have handled your paperwork before.
How We Work
From First Enquiry To Final Signature
Four stages, each with a named owner and a written output you can circulate internally.
Scope the lane
We map volumes, incoterms, packaging and deadlines before we quote, so the price you sign is the price you pay. Awkward questions are asked now, not at the border.
Book and document
You receive a written routing with cut-offs, transit time and a document checklist. We prepare the entry, the certificates and the insurance in parallel with collection.
Move and monitor
The control tower watches milestones against plan. If something slips we call you with the options and a recommendation, before you notice it on a tracking screen.
Deliver and prove
Signature, photograph and timestamp on delivery, then an invoice that reconciles line by line to the quotation. Documents stay downloadable in your account.
Ocean freight without the roll-over roulette
Ocean is still the backbone of transatlantic trade, and it is also where the industry treats customers worst. Space is oversold, boxes are rolled without notice, and the first a shipper hears about it is an empty delivery slot. We buy allocation on annual contracts instead of chasing the spot market every week, which is why our protected slots hold when rates spike.
For full container loads we confirm the vessel, the cut-off and the arrival window in writing, and we photograph the container seal at origin. For less than container load we run our own consolidations twice weekly on core lanes, which keeps freight off the shared boxes where damage and delay are most common.
- Named vessel and voyage on every confirmation
- Container seal, load and lashing photographs
- Reefer set-point monitoring with alert thresholds
- Demurrage and detention tracked and warned in advance
- Customs entry lodged before arrival wherever possible
Air freight for deadlines that cannot move
When a production line is down or a clinical shipment has a shelf life, transit time is the only number that matters. We hold block space with carriers on the North Atlantic and to the Gulf and Asia, and we run a next-flight-out desk that can have a driver at your door in hours.
Air also carries the heaviest compliance load. Screening, known-consignor status, dangerous goods declarations and lithium battery packing are handled by our own staff, so a shipment is not turned away at the build-up warehouse for a paperwork fault that could have been caught in the office.
- Deferred, standard, express and charter options priced side by side
- Known-consignor screening and secure build-up
- IATA dangerous goods and lithium battery documentation
- Active and passive temperature-controlled packaging
- AOG desk with hand-carry and on-board courier cover
Customs and compliance handled in-house
Most delays that look like transport failures are actually classification failures. A wrong HS code, a missing certificate of origin or an undeclared component will hold cargo at a border far longer than any weather event. Because our brokers sit inside the business, classification questions get an answer the same day rather than a week later from a subcontractor.
We file entries on both sides of the Atlantic, operate duty deferment and bonded transit, issue ATA carnets for exhibition and tooling movements, and keep an audit-ready archive of every entry we lodge on your behalf. If a customs authority ever asks you to justify a declaration, the file is already assembled.
- Licensed brokerage in the United States, United Kingdom and European Union
- HS classification reviews and binding ruling applications
- Duty deferment, bonded warehousing and T1 transit
- Certificates of origin, preference claims and free trade agreement checks
- Full audit trail retained and downloadable for seven years
Warehousing that behaves like part of your business
Storage is easy. Accurate storage is not. Our sites work to cycle counts rather than annual stock takes, so the number on your dashboard is the number on the shelf. Bonded space lets you defer duty until goods actually sell, which for seasonal importers is often the difference between a profitable quarter and a financed one.
Fulfilment is billed on what you use — pallet weeks, picks, packs and despatches — with no minimum committed footprint for the first twelve months. Peak capacity is arranged in advance so a good season does not become an operational emergency.
- Customs bonded and duty-suspended storage
- Pick, pack, kitting, labelling and light assembly
- Live inventory dashboard with low-stock alerts
- Returns triage, refurbishment and restock
- Overflow capacity contracted before peak, not during it
Visibility
A Control Tower That Calls You First
Tracking screens tell you what already happened. Our operators are paid to tell you what is about to happen.
- Milestone monitoring against the planned schedule, not just carrier status codes
- Exception calls within thirty minutes of a confirmed deviation, with two costed options
- One reference number covering every leg, mode and document on the journey
- Temperature, humidity and shock logging available on sensitive lanes
- Weekly performance reporting on transit time, on-time-in-full and cost per unit
- Named specialist plus a permanent deputy, so cover never depends on one inbox
Signature Lanes
Where We Are Strongest
We serve 180 countries, but these are the corridors where we hold our own allocation and our own people.
- NY
New York and New Jersey to Rotterdam and Antwerp
The lane the company was founded on. Twice-weekly groupage, protected FCL allocation and a fixed 48-hour European inland delivery window after clearance.
- UK
United Kingdom to United States east coast
Daily air consolidations plus weekly ocean, with post-Brexit preference checking built into the booking so shipments are not stopped for origin documentation.
- DE
Germany and Central Europe to North America
Industrial and automotive volumes moved by rail to the seaport, then protected ocean space, with a line-stop escalation route for production-critical parts.
- CN
Asia to Europe and North America
Ocean, rail land bridge and air priced side by side so procurement can choose between cash, carbon and calendar rather than being handed one answer.
Questions
The Things Clients Ask Before They Book
If your question is not here, the freight desk answers on the phone within one business hour.
How fast can I get a real quotation?
Within one business day for standard lanes, and usually the same day if you send origin, destination, weights, dimensions and incoterms together. You receive a written routing with transit time, cut-offs and a document checklist, not a rate range that changes when you accept it.
Is your pricing genuinely all-inclusive?
Yes. Quotations include terminal handling, documentation, customs entry, delivery and any surcharge we can foresee. Duty and tax are shown separately because they are government charges we collect rather than revenue we keep. Where a cost is genuinely variable, such as port storage caused by an inspection, we state the daily rate up front.
What happens if a shipment is delayed?
The control tower contacts you within thirty minutes of confirming a deviation, with the cause, the revised arrival window and at least two options such as an air upgrade or a re-route. You will not discover a delay from a tracking page.
Do you handle dangerous goods and temperature-controlled cargo?
Both. We hold IATA dangerous goods competence in-house, arrange lithium battery and hazard class documentation, and run GDP-aligned temperature-controlled lanes with validated packaging and live logging.
Can you take over an existing lane mid-contract?
Frequently. We run a parallel trial on a portion of your volume first so you can compare cost and transit time on real shipments before committing, and we take on the paperwork of migration rather than handing you a checklist.
What insurance cover is available?
All-risk marine and transit cover arranged at declared commercial value, including freight and duty where relevant. Carrier liability alone is limited by weight and rarely reflects what your cargo is worth, so we quote proper cover as standard and tell you when it is not needed.
Do you work with small shippers or only large accounts?
Both. Groupage and consolidation exist precisely so a single pallet can travel on the same protected schedule as a hundred. There is no minimum annual spend to open an account.
Which documents will you need from me?
Typically a commercial invoice, packing list, and where relevant a certificate of origin, licence or hazard declaration. We send a lane-specific checklist with the quotation and we check every document before it is filed, not after.
Tell us the lane. We will tell you the plan.
Send an origin, a destination and a rough volume. You will have a costed routing option back within one business day, and a named specialist attached to it for as long as you ship with us.