Answering Freight RFQs in Minutes Instead of Days: A Practical Setup
Set up a lane template, a rate store and margin rules so your team can turn freight RFQs around the same day.
A freight RFQ lands in a shared inbox at 4 pm: twelve lanes, mixed FTL and part loads, a Friday deadline. Someone copies lanes into Excel, digs out last quarter's carrier rates, emails three transporters for fresh quotes and waits. By the time the sheet is ready, the shipper has often already awarded the lanes to whoever replied first.
The pricing work itself is rarely the hard part. The delay comes from retyping lanes, hunting for the latest buy rate, chasing carriers on WhatsApp and getting a manager to sign off margins. Each RFQ is rebuilt from scratch, so your best pricing people spend their day on data entry instead of judgement.
Can this handle RFQs sent on shipper portals?
Yes, if you can download the lane file. Most portals export Excel or CSV, and the agent reads that file like any other attachment. Uploading the final response back to the portal usually stays a manual step your team controls.
What if our carrier rates change every week?
That is the point of a single rate store with validity dates. Update rates once when carriers send them, and every quote after that uses the latest number. Expired rates are flagged rather than silently reused.
Will automated pricing undercut our margins?
Not if the margin rules are explicit. The agent only applies the floors and targets you set. Anything below floor, or any lane without a valid buy rate, goes to a person before it leaves the building.