Alan Peat
FOB OR no FOB? - that was the question. A typographical error in a document web-paged by Freight Training led to FTW being approached by irate voices from the freight industry questioning how the long-standing and much-used commercial term FOB (free on board) could have disappeared when they were still using it every day.
FTW set about investigating this case of the missing FOB.
First, we established - among lots of angry comments like insulting, and misleading - that the statement had been in the paperwork that certain Freight Training students had acquired as part of their Incoterms 2000 course material.
And there in a company blurb lay the offending statement: Many exporters and importers still use FOB, CIT......amongst other commercial terms which have no application in modern trade.
We immediately checked our Cargo Info website, where Incoterms 2000 is detailed - a joint-production with Freight Training.
Nothing in there about the disappearance of FOB. Certainly that it had now assumed a very specific, and limited, area of use - but no FOB death notice.
The mystery was then communicated to Sean Wheeler and Phil Doran, the directors of Freight Training. After a number of Oh dear and I'll be blowed type comments from the two - off they went to solve the problem.
And, by return e-mail, appeared the answer.
Thanks for the opportunity to put the record straight, it said.
Firstly - of course FOB and CIF remain part of Incoterms 2000. Our posters, publications - even the text to hang on your Cargo Info site - cover both terms, along with the 11 other Incoterms published.
Our web site has a typo - in that the expression should read little or no application. We have removed the offending page pending a rewrite.
These two small words - little or - were the root of the problem.
And, for any students who may have been misled, find out what FOB is all about from Cargo Info's Incoterms 2000, provided by Freight Training.
Access Cargo Info at www. cargoinfo.co.za
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