It was doable in the 90's with certain countries, I'm sure there have been advances since then. The specific example I'm aware of in the 90's was consignments being airfreighted to Australia, the invoices for the goods were 'faxed' in advance of freighting and the goods were customs cleared in Australia before the plane left the tarmac at Heathrow.
TIR Convention From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Convention on International Transport of Goods Under Cover of TIR Carnets (TIR Convention) is a multilateral treaty that was concluded at Geneva on 14 November 1975 to simplify and harmonise the administrative formalities of international road transport. (TIR stands for "Transports Internationaux Routiers" or "International Road Transports".) The 1975 convention replaced the TIR Convention of 1959, which itself replaced the 1949 TIR Agreement between a number of European countries.[1] The conventions were adopted under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). As of December 2018, there are 76 parties to the Convention, including 75 states and the European Union.
The TIR Convention establishes an international customs transit system with maximum facility to move goods:
from a customs office of departure in one country to a customs office of destination in another country;
without requiring extensive and time-consuming border checks at intermediate borders;
while, at the same time, providing customs authorities with the required security and guarantees.
The TIR system not only covers customs transit by road but a combination is possible with other modes of transport (e.g., rail, inland waterway, and even maritime transport), as long as at least one part of the total transport is made by road.
To date, more than 33,000 international transport operators had been authorised (by their respective competent national authorities) to access the TIR system, using around 1.5 million TIR carnets per year.
In light of the expected increase in world trade, further enlargement of its geographical scope and the forthcoming introduction of an electronic TIR system (so-called "eTIR-system"), it is expected that the TIR system will continue to remain the only truly global customs transit system.
Due to the large blue-and-white TIR plates carried by vehicles using the TIR convention, the word "TIR" entered many languages, such as Italian[2][3], Polish[4], Portuguese[5], Romanian[6] or Turkish,[7] as a neologism, becoming the default generic name of a large truck.
Saudi Arabia acceded to the convention on 17 May 2018, and the convention entered into force for Saudi Arabia on 17 November 2018. With the accession of Saudi Arabia, the TIR Convention had seventy-four Contracting Parties.[8]