Exports and imports to any port
Freight forwarding & customs clearance
Door to door, through a network of international agents. Family-owned, with a line that runs back to the founding of Marine Forwarding Company in 1949, and a staff you reach by phone rather than a queue.
- Established
- 2015
- Ownership
- Family-owned
- Home port
- Norfolk, VA
- Direct line
- (757) 857-4141
Services
What we handle
Import Customs Clearance
Entry filing, ISF 10+2, tariff classification, duty and bonds. Our licensed customs broker agent transacts the customs business.
Open 02Export Documentation
AES and EEI filing, bills of lading, certificates of origin, consular legalization and letter of credit presentation.
Open 03Vehicle Shipping
Cars, trucks and heavy equipment worldwide by container or RoRo, including the CBP title and vehicle presentation due 72 hours prior to export.
Open 04Customs Bonds
Single entry and continuous bonds, sized against your real import volume rather than your expected volume.
Open 05Marine Cargo Insurance
Carrier liability stops at $500 per package under COGSA. All risk cover runs a fraction of a percent of cargo value.
Open AllAll services
The full list, from ISF filing and duty drawback through to consular legalization and yacht transport.
Open
The firm
Two generations in this trade
Marine Forwarding Company was founded in 1949. Marshall V. Slawson entered forwarding in 1953 and opened its first Virginia office in 1971. His daughter Lana A. Ponsonby ran that office for twenty years, became Vice President in 2001, and opened Marine Forwarding Company of Virginia in 2015.
Between her father's fifty-one years in the trade and her own forty-seven, the gap between a shipment that clears and one that sits on demurrage is somebody who has seen the problem before. Hazardous materials work is a specialism here, which is why chemical exporters and importers keep coming back.
Reference
Incoterms 2020, in plain language
Eleven three letter rules decide who pays freight, who carries risk, and the exact point it changes hands. Getting one wrong is how importers pay twice.
- FOB on containers
- Risk passes at the ship, and you hand a box to a terminal days earlier. Use FCA.
- CIF insurance
- Minimum Clauses C cover only, which excludes most ordinary damage.
- DDP into the US
- Makes a foreign seller the importer of record, with a bond and duty liability.
Next step
Tell us what you are moving.
Send the commodity, the weight and dimensions, the origin and destination, and your target sailing. That gives us enough for a firm quote.