About As Agents Only
A global freight and supply chain briefing for the people who run networks, filed three times a day.
"As agents only" is the line a forwarder signs under on a bill of lading. It says: we act for the principal, we are not the carrier. It is also how this desk works. It carries other people's numbers to you intact, and tells you whose they are.
Three briefings go out every day, on one clock for a worldwide readership: 10:00, 16:00 and 22:00 GMT. The first edition covers the market: rates, capacity and rule changes. The second covers strategy: sourcing, inventory and resilience. The third alternates between logistics technology and sustainable logistics. Subscribers get all three in one email after the 22:00 GMT briefing.
The desk rotates through six regions so that a week of briefings covers the whole map: Global, North America, Latin America & Caribbean, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia-Pacific. The site opens on the briefings from your own region.
Editorial standards
Every briefing follows the same published procedure.
- Sources are opened, not remembered. Each briefing is researched from pages read on the day of filing. Primary publishers come first: governments, customs and statistics offices, official journals, port and canal authorities, the IMO, UNCTAD and WTO, index publishers such as Drewry, Freightos, Xeneta, the Shanghai Shipping Exchange and the Baltic Exchange, and company filings. Established trade press is used for reporting.
- Every figure is in the ledger. Each number, date and named rule in a briefing is recorded as a claim tied to its source. A briefing with an unsourced figure is rejected before it can publish. The ledger is printed under every briefing.
- Checked twice. Before publication, a separate fact-check that has not seen the research re-opens each source and tests each claim, the headline and the framing against it.
- Stated as the source states it. Figures keep their original currency and unit. Forecasts are attributed to whoever made them. Derived figures are marked as derived. Proposed rules are not described as in force.
- Advice is labelled. The Strategic Playbook in each briefing is the desk's judgment, drawn from the facts above it. It is analysis, not legal, tax or investment advice.
The research, writing and fact-checking are carried out by an automated editorial system working to these standards, under the publisher's direction. Photographs are licensed from Pixabay contributors and credited on each briefing.
Corrections
When a briefing is wrong, it is corrected in place and the correction is dated and printed under the text. Nothing is silently changed. To report an error, write to desk@asagentsonly.com with the briefing's headline and the source that shows the error.
Contact
Corrections, tips and questions: desk@asagentsonly.com. How personal data is handled: the privacy notice.