The present article is an attempt to overview the issues concerned when entering into the contractual relations of international freight forwarding. The freight forwarding industry has changed substantially over the past century to meet the needs of modern civil relationships between importers, exporters and other entities who are interested in safe, fast and cost–efficient transportation activity. The idea of ‘door-to-door’ delivery has transformed the freight forwarding services into a kind of international transportation outsourcing. Therefore, the structuring of the freight forwarding contract involves understanding of the following key features. Firstly, the subject matter of the contract is complex and freight forwarders should be authorized by the contract to perform the widest range of legal and actual operations. Secondly, diversity, complexity and flexibility of the contract’s subject matter demands the very formalized, clear and transparent procedure for entering and performing the freight forwarding contract either at the freight forwarder’ own account or with the intermediary elements on the basis of limited liability. Thirdly, there is no unified treaty currently, regulating the international freight forwarding industry and obligations for it. The unification of the law, governing the freight forwarding activity, is compounded by the fact that at the level of the various national legislations there is no single approach to the disclosure of the legal status of the freight forwarder. Fourthly, in these circumstances a special role in the unified regulation belongs to different kinds of model rules and transport documents, which are developed by non-governmental groups and associations of forwarders. Use of a particular set of model rules and related transport documents influence the real structure of the relationship for certain freight forwarding contracts.