Free on Board

Definition

An Incoterm (2020) applicable only to sea and inland waterway transport where the seller's responsibility ends once the goods are loaded on board the vessel at the named port of shipment. The buyer bears all costs and risks from that point. FOB is rarely used in time-critical air logistics (which uses FCA instead), but may appear in multimodal scenarios where an ocean shipment is diverted to air freight due to urgency. Common confusion: FOB should not be used for air or multimodal transport — FCA is the correct alternative.