Marc Graef at Kuehne & Nagel, Inc. Chicago, IL, USA
Introduction
This is the report of my internship I made at the Kuehne & Nagel (KN) branch in Chicago from the 16th of July 2003 till the 31st of January 2003. Kuehne & Nagel (KN) is one of the leading logistics and freight-forwarding companies in the world. KN employs about 17.000 agents in nearly 500 offices worldwide.
I had made an apprenticeship with KN in Koblenz, before I started studying logistics and e-business at the university of applied sciences in Remagen. I have been working as a part time employee at KN since I started studying. This is why I know this company so well. In the following I will describe Chicago at itself, before I will start writing about my work at the office and the lessons learned.
Chicago
If you take a look back to my cover page, you can already see the most interesting area of Chicago, the North Side and the so-called Loop. The view you can get from the John Hancock Centre is just unbelievable. At times of good and clear weather, you are able to see four different states: Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. Even if the Sears Tower is higher than the John Hancock, the view is not as clear as it. I hope you understand, that I cannot describe all of Chicago’s attractions, but you really have to go to the John Hancock Centre to get a first impression of this exciting city.
Chicago is a city of variety as well. You will find many kinds of buildings like very old fashioned ones between very modern ones. In Chicago there are many various styles of architecture at one place. Some people find it weird building up a city with so many different styles, but I think this is a characteristic feature and I really love it.
Chicago has 2.7 million inhabitants in the city and approximately 8 million inhabitants in all suburbs around. The most famous suburb is Oak Park, where Ernest Hemmingway was born in 1899. Chicago’s Inhabitants are immigrants from all over the world. The biggest groups of immigrants came from Poland, Ireland and Germany during the 19th century. This is why I was able to go the “Oktoberfest” in Chicago. Unfortunately I missed St. Patrick’s Day in. It is a very old tradition that the Irish colour the river in green on this specific day. Regarding to the polish people I should say, that Chicago is the 2nd biggest polish city after Warsaw. Chicago itself is the 3rd biggest city after New York and Los Angeles within the United States.
It is also famous in a bad way for his history during the times of prohibition. Al Capone was one of the most violent and most dangerous criminals. He gave orders to kill many competitive and sold a lot of alcohol even if it was strictly forbidden. The story ended in 1931 when Elliot Ness, an officer of the federal tax department, arrested Al Capone.
If I told you all about Chicago, I would need plenty of additional time, but I hope I have been able to give you a short impression about it.
At the Office
As I have already mentioned before, KN is a logistics and freight-forwarding company. During my internship I worked in the below mentioned departments:
Ocean freight import FCL
Ocean freight import LCL
Air freight import customs
Air freight import
- 1. Ocean freight import FCL (Full Container Load)
In this department I was working for a key account customer. “My customer” was a producer of aluminium coils, which exported its products from Germany to the United States of America. These products were bought from machine manufacturing companies. The containers were dispatched from german or dutch ports to the United States of America. The consignees had several producing plants and warehouses for raw material, so that I had to organize the transportation of the containers within the whole United States after the containers had been unloaded at the ports of arrival. I coordinated each shipment so that customers received their goods on time. This involved working with the steamship lines, the customs broker, truckers and warehouses throughout the United States.
- 2. Ocean freight import LCL (Less than Container Load)
KN in Germany is dispatching 2 to 4 containers a week, which contain consolidation freight. Consolidation freight means, that different shippers send freight to the same destination like the Chicago area (This includes the states Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan). Freight forwarding companies like KN collect these different shipments and consolidate these into one or more container. After consolidating the different shipments in container, KN in Germany sends these containers to another KN branch office like Chicago. This procedure is called the export side. On the import side, KN Chicago arranges the pick up of these containers at the port of arrival and the delivery to the KN Chicago warehouse. After arriving in Chicago the containers will be unloaded and every single shipment will be dispatched to its consignee.
I arranged the consolidation containers, which were dispatched from Bremen or Bremerhaven and contained freight for the North of Illinois and Wisconsin. This involved working with the above mentioned supply chain members again like steamship lines, customs broker and trucking companies.
- 3. Air freight import customs
In this department I organized the customs clearance procedures for all airfreight shipments, which arrived at Chicago’s international airport O’Hare. The international O’Hare airport is one of the busiest airports in the world regarding to cargo. I hope you do not mind if I am not going to specify these customs topic, but this would be to specific for any reader, who has never been involved in customs clearance regulations before.
- 4. Air freight import
After an airfreight shipment has been customs cleared, the airfreight import department is going to arrange the delivery to its consignee. Actually this should not be an issue, but airfreight shipments are always very hot ones, so that consignees demand 24 hours or any other kind of special deliveries. This is what I had to do in this department. After the shipments had been delivered I was also responsible for billing.
Lessons Learned
As you can see, I worked in different departments, so that I have been able to get an impression about the whole freight forwarding process within the United States of America. Even if I had already successfully completed an apprenticeship as a forwarding agent in Germany before, I really learned a lot of new and very interesting facts. I can only strongly recommend a practical semester in overseas to anybody. Especially in freight forwarding and logistics it is really a must to improve language skills and to collect international business experiences.
If you are interested to make a practical semester in overseas, especially in the United States of America, and you got questions of any kind, please don’t hesitate to contact me. ‘Sprachen Internationales’ will know how to contact me.
