How to Choose a China-to-US FBA Freight Forwarder: A 2026 Checklist for Amazon Sellers
Picking a freight forwarder is the single decision that most affects your FBA restock reliability. This checklist covers the eight things that actually separate a forwarder who delivers on the plan from one who leaves your cartons sitting at a port.
1. Are they an Amazon Partnered Carrier or SPN provider?
Anyone can move a container. Delivering under your Amazon inbound plan — with appointments booked, FC splits respected and scan-in confirmed — is a different capability. Amazon SPN service providers and Partnered Carriers are vetted by Amazon and work inside the inbound plan rather than dropping freight at a port and handing it off.
Ask directly: do you deliver under my inbound plan, or do I need a separate domestic trucker? The answer changes who is accountable when an appointment is missed.
2. Do they own the China-side pickup?
Most delays start before the goods ever sail. If the forwarder relies on your supplier to arrange trucking to the port, you inherit every miscount, mislabel and late collection. A forwarder with its own trucking and consolidation warehouses in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Ningbo, Qingdao and Yiwu controls the timeline from the factory door.
3. Is the quote a real total, or a rate per CBM?
A per-CBM or per-kg rate is not a price. The number you pay includes pickup, export declaration, freight, terminal handling, customs entry, delivery to each FC and any accessorials such as liftgate or residential delivery. Ask for one all-in shipment total against your actual FBA labels before you compare providers.
- Does the total include China pickup from the supplier's address?
- Does it cover every FC on the inbound plan, not just the first?
- Are export declaration, ISF and entry fees itemised?
- What triggers a liftgate, residential or waiting-time charge?
4. Do they clear customs in house?
In-house licensed brokers handle HTS classification, Section 301 exposure, CPSC eFiling and other PGA requirements as part of the shipment. Outsourced clearance adds a handoff at exactly the point where mistakes are most expensive — and where a mismatch between the certificate and the importer of record will hold your freight.
5. Do they have US warehouses, or just a delivery partner?
Owned warehouse space in Los Angeles and New York/New Jersey gives you options Amazon does not: hold inventory outside FBA to avoid storage fees, split a container across several inbound plans, relabel or repack rejected cartons, and release stock as your velocity changes. A pure delivery partner can only push everything to the FC on arrival.
6. Can you see the price and book without emailing anyone?
Quote turnaround is a proxy for operational maturity. If getting a number takes two days of email, expect the same latency when something goes wrong mid-shipment. Online quoting and booking means the rates are systematised, not improvised.
Get an instant quote at us.link-trans.com/quote.
7. What does tracking actually show?
Ask to see a real tracking record before you book. You want milestone-level visibility — pickup, container loaded, sailed, arrived, cleared, delivered, FC scan-in — in English, not a screenshot of a Chinese carrier portal pasted into WeChat.
8. Do the credentials check out?
FMC/NVOCC licensing, WCA membership and ISO certification are the baseline. Volume rankings from independent analysts are a useful second signal: Linktrans has been recognised by Frost & Sullivan as the No.1 China-to-U.S. FBA LCL volume leader for three consecutive years.
Where Linktrans fits
We run China pickup, ocean and air freight, in-house customs clearance, US warehousing and FC delivery as one booking, as an Amazon SPN service provider and Partnered Carrier — with online quoting and English milestone tracking on every shipment.