Career Mirror -- by Mark Sproxton

Quickly flipping through the pages of a foot-and-a-half thick book on customs rules and regulations, the phone rings. As if anticipating the call, within seconds the caller receives a polite and well-explained paraphrase of the basic rules regarding importing rugs from Turkey. Guaranteed, the next call will be for another matter entirely.

"The thing with customs is there's something new everyday," says James Judd, a customs consultant with Calgary Customs Brokers. "You never get bored." Customs brokers act as the link between companies and Canada customs ensuring their client's goods flow across the border as quickly as possible by ensuring all required paperwork and fees are looked after properly. As a consultant, Judd may also get involved in matters such as legal appeals or international trades disputes.

Essentially, there's tons to know. "A lot of it is on-the-job training," he said. "You need at least five to 10 years of experience to be a good customs broker." And what makes a good customs broker? Besides patience and sound communication skills, Judd said being able to pay attention to detail is key as new penalties for paperwork errors will soon be implemented in Canada. "If a client gets hit with $100,000 worth of penalties, where are they going to look?"

Judd has had plenty of time to understand the importance of being a stickler for details. He's been with Calgary Customs Brokers for two-and a-half years after moving from another company where he worked for 13 years. While he enjoys the work now, he never imagined he would wind up as a customs broker. "A lot of it is circumstances," he said. "If you take a poll of a lot of brokers, they stumbled into it. It's something no one was considering."

He may not have been considering the career, but he knew a fair bit about this unique position."I'm multigenerational. My father is a competitor of mine." Being a customs broker means you posses many skills related only to this type of work. "The skills you do learn could be put toward purchasing or (work) as a traffic manager. You don't find it anywhere else. The knowledge you get is pretty specific and not easily transferable to another industry." Many customs brokers learn the position on the job, however, a two-year correspondence course is available as well.

Regardless of background, customs brokers typically work in an office environment and spend most of their day on the computer and phone. Many work standard work hours, although some places have people on-call 24 hours a day as goods are always moving and crossing borders either on land, on water or through the air.

A typical task would go something like this: a trucker picks up a load in Tuscon, Arizona and stamps that load with a bar code. The bar code is sent electronically to the customs broker. The bar code contains the details of the trucker's load along with details about which border crossing he'll use and the time he'll reach that point. The customs broker would then ensure all the required paperwork is filled out and transfer those documents electronically to the border crossing. If all goes well, the trucker won't even have to leave the cab of the rig at the border.

Depending on what's on the load will determine how much paperwork is required and how many government departments have to be informed of the shipment. For instance, Health Canada wants to know about all shipments of things like shampoos and pharmaceuticals. Agriculture Canada wants to know about loads of fruits coming North of the 49th and so on. "And they have to be satisfied before it comes into the country," Judd said.

For lose considering this career option, Judd said don't expect to get rich. Customs brokers make in the $25,000 to $50,000 a year range. But he said there will be a continual demand for this work. "There will always be a demand for brokers short of Canada and the U.S. merging," he said. "The average mom and pop shop needs to hire someone to do that for them. The average importer just doesn't have time."