Shippers frequently engage the services of freight or forwarding agents, namely, persons who undertake for a reward to have the goods carried and delivered at their destination. The services of these persons are ordinarily engaged when the carriage of the goods involves successive carriers or use of successive means of transport. A forwarding agent makes contracts of carriage for his principal. He may be a carrier or he may be merely a forwarding agent.When a carrier enters into a contract with the shipper by which he undertakes to carry goods in circumstances that involve an obligation on his part to hand over the goods to another carrier, he may be regarded as acting to some extent in the capacity of a forwarding agent. Conversely, when a forwarding agent carries the goods himself, he is to that extent a carrier and incurs the liabilities of a carrier.