# Import License/Transhipper



## bunchollamas (Feb 24, 2015)

Hi Everyone,

I recently made my first purchase on Aquabid for two betta fishes!! I'm incredibly excited to receive these two new additions to my family.  The transhipper occupation seems to be quite vague to me, and I was hoping for clarity.

All the information I can find online regarding transhippers is that some are better than others, but overall they're incredibly busy, and are unable to communicate as much as most people would like them to. I guess, I'm curious as to why there are only a handful of transhippers out there?

Is the importing process incredibly lengthy and difficult?

It seems that shipments from Thailand happen every two weeks? It also seems that the transhipper may have to spend most or all of their day at the airport as it goes through customs and gets inspected by the US Fish and Wildlife department?

It also seems that these transhippers just work for themselves. Is it not very profitable?

Does anyone have a clear understanding on the entire process for the transhipper?


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## Bailmint (Jun 15, 2013)

Well I'm not 100% clear on how the process goes, but I can probably answer some of your questions.

Well I have noticed that most transhippers do not respond very fast, they usually have jobs on the side as transhipping alone will not usually pay the bills.

I'm not assuming that it's difficult, but it could be lengthy. Airports aren't exactly known for efficiency.

Well transhippers choose their shipment dates actually, I know that Linda has a schedule for transhipping every two weeks. She has trouble with communication though and prefers phone calls as she has trouble with texting and emails. I would believe that they do spend a lot of their day at the airport though as Linda gets over 400 shipments every two weeks.

Well transhippers do have a small fee, around $2-$4 a fish, and if you get as many fish as Linda gets-than that's quite a bit of money. I actually want to become a transhipper myself, I'm just not quite sure where to start.

My understanding is that a person who has a job but has a lot of extra time and a passion for animals/fish would qualify to be a transhipper. AB sellers will send all their fish to the transhipper on their chosen date, which is a lot of fish, and the transhipper will then go to the airport and have them legalized. I'm not sure how long that takes though. They'll bring them home of course and some transhippers have holding tanks that they put the fish in. They'll unpack all of the fish and put them in holding tanks until they're ready to be shipped out again. They'll get new bags and repack them to be shipped to their individual owners.


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