Organises the movement of goods rather than moving them: routing, carrier contracting, customs, documentation and costing. The commercial half of logistics, and the most international job in this repo.
| Official title | Kaufmann/-frau für Spedition und Logistikdienstleistung |
| Protected title | No |
| Category | logistics |
| Typical qualification | Duale Ausbildung, 3 years, IHK exam |
| Regulated | No |
| Last reviewed | 2026-09 |
What the job involves
Planning and booking freight movements by road, sea, air and rail; negotiating with carriers; preparing transport and customs documentation; applying Incoterms; calculating costs and margins; handling claims and insurance; and being the point of contact when a shipment goes wrong at 2am in a different time zone.
Specialisation follows mode — Seefracht, Luftfracht, Landverkehr — and the mode shapes the working day. Sea freight is document-heavy and deadline-driven; air freight is fast and exception-driven; road is dispatch-driven.
Customs (Zoll) expertise is the most valuable specialism. It became markedly more valuable after Brexit and with the expansion of EU trade controls and sanctions regimes, and there are not enough people who genuinely understand it.
Qualification route
- 3 years dual, employer plus Berufsschule
- Entry: mittlerer Schulabschluss or Abitur; Abitur common at large forwarders
- Paid throughout: roughly €1,000–1,300/month gross
- Ends with the IHK Abschlussprüfung
- Afterwards: Verkehrsfachwirt, customs specialisations, or Fachwirt für Logistiksysteme
Pay
| Stage | Gross/month |
|---|---|
| Newly qualified | €2,800 – €3,400 |
| Experienced (Disponent, Sachbearbeiter) | €3,400 – €4,300 |
| Specialist — customs, air/sea freight | €4,000 – €5,200 |
| Niederlassungsleitung / branch management | €5,500 – €8,000 |
Pay is best at the logistics hubs: Hamburg and Bremerhaven for sea freight, Frankfurt and Leipzig for air, Duisburg for rail and inland waterway, and the Rhine-Ruhr corridor generally. Global forwarders (DHL, Kuehne+Nagel, DB Schenker, DSV, Hellmann) pay predictably and offer international mobility; small regional Speditionen pay less and give broader responsibility sooner.
Demand
Strong and stable. Germany’s position as a trade and transit economy makes forwarding structurally important, and the customs and compliance side has grown faster than the supply of people who can do it.
Foreign candidates
The most foreigner-friendly occupation in this repo after software development.
- To work: nothing required. Unregulated.
- For the skilled-worker visa: IHK FOSA equivalence assessment. A foreign logistics or business qualification often maps reasonably well here.
- EU Blue Card is possible at specialist and management level with a comparable degree, though not at entry pay.
- Language: B2 German, but — unusually — English is genuinely half the job. Carriers, overseas agents and customers are international, and many forwarders run substantial parts of their operation in English. Native command of a third language, and knowledge of a specific trade lane, is a direct commercial asset in a way it simply is not in most German occupations.
Pitfalls
- Liability is real. German forwarding operates under the HGB and the ADSp standard terms, and errors in documentation or instructions can be expensive. Understand what the ADSp limits and what it does not.
- Customs mistakes are costly and personal — sanctions and export-control breaches are enforced seriously. This is not paperwork to be casual about.
- Out-of-hours pressure is structural in air and sea freight.
- Hub location dominates pay more than employer size. A move to Hamburg or Frankfurt is often worth more than a promotion elsewhere.
Sources
- HGB (Frachtgeschäft, §§407 ff.) — gesetze-im-internet.de/hgb, accessed 2026-09
- DSLV Bundesverband Spedition und Logistik — dslv.org, accessed 2026-09
- Zoll — zoll.de, accessed 2026-09
- BERUFENET — berufenet.arbeitsagentur.de, accessed 2026-09