There are several methods, in the literature, for finding the fuzzy optimal solution of fully fuzzy transportation problems (transportation problems in which all the parameters are represented by fuzzy numbers). In this paper, the shortcomings of some existing methods are pointed out and to overcome these shortcomings, a new method (based on fuzzy linear programming formulation) is proposed to find the fuzzy optimal solution of unbalanced fuzzy transportation problems with a new representation of trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. The advantages of the proposed method over existing method are discussed. Also, it is shown that it is better to use the proposed representation of trapezoidal fuzzy numbers instead of existing representation of trapezoidal fuzzy numbers for finding the fuzzy optimal solution of fuzzy transportation problems. To illustrate the proposed method a fuzzy transportation problem (FTP) is solved by using the proposed method and the obtained results are discussed. The proposed method is easy to understand and to apply for finding the fuzzy optimal solution of fuzzy transportation problems occurring in real life situations.