How to choose the company that will move your machine

An industrial machine is not a pallet. It weighs several tonnes, it will not always fit in a container, it has to be lifted twice, and a single knock can leave it useless. Even so, plenty of buyers hand it to the same supplier who brings them boxes, and find out the difference when it is already too late.

This guide explains who you should actually hire, what to ask them, and which answers should end the conversation.

Who does what

The shipping line owns the vessel and moves cargo from port to port. It does not dismantle, pack, clear customs or deliver anything to your plant.

The freight forwarder, also known as a cargo agent or, in Spanish, a transitario, organises the operation end to end: it books the ocean freight with the shipping line and coordinates inland haulage at both ends, packing and insurance. This is your main point of contact.

The customs broker files the declaration with customs in your country. Sometimes the forwarder provides one, sometimes you appoint your own, but it is a separate role, licensed and liable in its own right.

The project cargo specialist is a forwarder with the equipment and the track record for out-of-gauge pieces: low-bed trailers, heavy lifting, route surveys and special permits. For a press, an overhead crane or a complete line, this is who you call.

The questions that tell a professional from a middleman

• “Have you moved a machine like this before?” Ask for a specific case: which equipment, what weight, which route. A vague answer is an answer.
• “What is NOT included in this quotation?” In writing. It is the most profitable question in the whole operation.
• “Who does the packing and the lashing, and to what standard?” A good forwarder talks about blocking, lashing points and ISPM 15 before you even ask.
• “What insurance are you offering me, exactly?” They should give you the cover and the deductible, not “yes, it's insured”.
• “Is there a transhipment? Where?” There almost always is, and in this region it is usually Panama. A supplier who says so upfront is being transparent.
• “Who picks up the phone if something goes wrong on a Sunday?” The name and number of a person, not a generic inbox.
• “How do you handle demurrage at the port?” If they do not know how many free days you have at Puerto Cortés, Santo Tomás de Castilla, Moín, Caldera, Acajutla, Corinto or Colón, they do not know your destination.

Signs that rule a supplier out on the spot

• They quote a firm price over the phone without asking for dimensions or weight.
• They ask for no photos and no technical data sheet for the machine.
• The offer carries no validity date. A freight rate quoted a month ago is worthless.
• They avoid putting in writing what is left out.
• They promise an exact door-to-door delivery date. Nobody controls the weather, port congestion or the pace of a customs office.
• The price sits well below the other two. That almost always means line items are missing and will turn up later.

Checks you can run yourself

Before you sign, in fifteen minutes: check that the company is registered and has years of trading behind it; look the address up on a map; make sure the name on the email, the website and the invoice all match; and ask whether they belong to an international forwarder network, which gives you a route for claims if something goes wrong.

And the most useful step of all: ask for three quotations based on exactly the same data. Not so you can take the cheapest, but because the gaps between them show you which line items exist. The dearest one is usually the only complete one.

One supplier or several

You can hire a single forwarder to handle everything door to door, or split the job: one forwarder at origin, the shipping line separately and your own customs broker at destination. The first is more comfortable and leaves one party accountable; the second usually comes out slightly cheaper but turns you into the coordinator.

If this is your first import, pay for the comfort. The price difference does not make up for discovering halfway through that nobody had booked the crane at destination.

Where we fit in

We are not freight forwarders and we take no commission on transport, so we have no stake in which one you hire. What we do is put together the data a serious quotation is built on — real dimensions and weight with the machine dismantled, photos, technical data sheet, exact collection point — and coordinate loading at origin with the seller so the truck does not pull up to a locked unit.

With that information, any decent forwarder can give you a firm quotation. Without it, they all quote by eye and they all raise the price later.

Read next

For the figures and the line items, what it costs to bring a machine to Central America. For the route and the ports, shipping a machine from Europe to Central America. To see who pays for each leg, the Incoterms. And for the order the whole operation follows, the process step by step.

Guidance note, September 2026. We do not recommend or represent any particular transport company, and we receive no commission from them. Choosing and contracting the logistics operator is your decision.