Domestic brokerage and international forwarding share a customer and almost nothing else.
Why it is a different business, the three ways a domestic brokerage can participate, what to know even if you never touch it, and what building the capability actually requires.
The honest recommendation for most brokerages under a hundred people is to refer it out and be excellent at the referral. A customer whose international freight you handled badly will reconsider the domestic freight you handle well.
International freight extends the cash conversion cycle considerably and can require advancing duties on the customer’s behalf. A brokerage that enters without modelling that will feel it before it sees it.
No industry benchmarks. Where a figure appears it is either sourced to a public filing and cited, or labelled as the author’s own judgment. Written by an operator with fifteen years building and scaling freight brokerages.