Logistics Terminology

Shipper is the person or company who is usually the supplier or owner of commodities shipped. Also called Consignor.

Carrier is a person or company that transports goods or people for any person or company and that is responsible for any possible loss of the goods during transport.

Freight Forwarder is a person or corporation who arranges transport of goods on behalf of either the seller or buyer. In many cases the freight forwarder will also consolidate several small shipments into one larger one to take advantage of better freight rates. In most cases the freight forwarder will assume the legal liabilities of acting as a carrier

Non vessel operating common carrier (NVOCC) is a cargo consolidator who does not own any vessel, but acts as a carrier legally by accepting required responsibilities of a carrier who issues his own bill of lading (or airway bill), which is called House bill of lading under sea shipment and House airway bill under air shipment.Activities between a NVOCC and a freight forwarder are similar to each other except some differences.

• An NVOCC need not be an agent or partner of a freight forwarding company, where as a freight forwarding company can act as a partner or agent for an NVOCC.  
• Basically speaking, NVOCC acts a ‘carrier to shipper’ and ‘shipper to carrier’.
• NVOCC can own and operate their own or leased containers.    
• NVOCC acts as a virtual carrier and accepts all liabilities of a carrier legally, in certain areas of operation

Consignee is the party shown on the bill of lading or air waybill to whom the shipment is consigned. Need not always be the buyer, and in some countries will be the buyer's bank.

Notify Party is the person or company to be advised by the carrier upon arrival of the goods at the destination port.

Less than Container Load (LCL): If a shipper does not have enough goods to accommodate in a fully loaded container, he arrange with a consolidator to book his cargo. This type of shipment is called LCL shipment.

Full Container Load (FCL): If an exporter has goods to accommodate in one full container load, he books an FCL Difference between LCL and FCL copy (Full Container Load) to stuff his cargo. In an FCL cargo, the complete goods in the said container owns by one shipper. In an FCL owned by one shipper, the cargo in the container need not have fully loaded cargo in the container

Incoterms rules or International Commercial Terms are a series of pre-defined commercial terms. You can find more details about it in the Wiki article

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms

Container Freight Station (CFS) is a warehouse where goods are consolidated into or deconsolidated from containers for transport to their next destination.This is typically used when you are shipping your cargo as a Less than Container Load (LCL) shipment

• If you purchased less than a container’s worth of goods, your shipment will head to a warehouse (CFS) for consolidation in the origin country.  There, your shipment will be loaded into a container along with other people’s goods, before the container is taken aboard a ship for transportation to the destination country.
• Once the container reaches the destination country, it will be taken to another warehouse so that your goods can be de-consolidated and separated from the other shipments.  The warehouse will then store your goods until you or a trucker picks it up.

Container Yard (CY) is the area that is within the port, container terminal or dry port where shipping containers are stored. The containers are going to be stored there either before the container is loaded onto the ship or after the container has been unloaded from the ship after it arrives in port.

Inland Container Depot (ICD) are Depots situated at inland points away from sea ports. In ICD, a combination of services of sea custodian, customs department, carriers, freight forwarders, customs brokers etc. are carried out to facilitate exporters and importers for smooth handling of cargo.

Mother vessel is big in size compared to feeder vessel. Mother vessels only serve difference between mother vessel and feeder vessel 1 between major big ports. Mother vessels have the capacity to carry thousands of containers.

Feeder vessel is normally small in size compared to Mother vessel. Feeder vessels serves between smaller ports and major ports. In other words, feeder vessels feeds cargo to mother vessel from smaller ports to large ports for exports and from major main ports to smaller ports for imports