Trucking rate management for freight forwarders.
Requests go out to three or four carriers. Replies come back over a day or two in different formats. The quote agent reads each one, ties it to the job, and builds the comparison. Anything outside your rules goes to a person.
- First quote
- Carrier responds
- Revised quote
- Booked
- Every rate stays on the shipment: from first quote to revised quote
The rate never gets managed. It gets chased.
Most freight forwarders and freight brokerages run trucking rates the same way: email three or four carriers, track the replies in a spreadsheet or an inbox search, compare by hand, and re-type the winner into the TMS you already run. At ten jobs a week it is manageable. At real volume it is where rates get missed, expire, or get booked off a stale number. Drayage makes it worse, since one container move can pull quotes from several local truckers at once, each in its own thread.
Tracked, normalized, and tied to the job.
Rate requests tracked, not chased
Send your requests as usual. The agent reads the replies as they arrive, ties them to the job, and builds the comparison with no spreadsheet to maintain.
Email body or attachment, one view
A rate in an email body and a rate in an attached sheet land in the same comparison. Carrier, number, validity, and conditions, side by side.
One decision, then it is logged
The agent records the selection on the job and prepares the TMS fields, so the winning rate is not re-typed. Agent write events are kept in a protected journal. Anything outside your rules goes to a person.
Pending replies stay visible
Waiting on a reply that is a day out? The job is flagged pending and surfaces when the reply lands.
From request out to booking bound, step by step.
Request goes out
Your team emails three or four carriers for a trucking or drayage rate on the job, through your existing process.
Replies arrive
Carriers respond on their own clock and in their own formats, some in the email body and some as attached rate sheets.
The agent reads each one
It identifies the carrier and extracts the rate, validity window, and any fuel or accessorial conditions from the email body or the attached rate sheet.
It ties the rate to the job
Each reply to your request is tied to the job it was sent for, so the trucking rate sits with the rest of the shipment record, not in a stray thread.
It surfaces the comparison
The collected rates appear side by side, so your team compares without rebuilding a spreadsheet.
Your rules set who decides
The agent records the choice, prepares the TMS fields, and ties the confirmation back to the job. Each action has its own setting: it runs on its own, it is sent for review, or it waits for your team’s reply. Anything outside your rules goes to a person.
A load board and this agent are not the same tool. A board helps you find capacity. The agent manages the rate replies you collect from the carriers you already work with, and ties them to the job.
Where the work happens.
All solutions
Straight answers.
What is trucking rate management for a freight forwarder?
Keeping every rate request and every carrier reply organized at the job level. A typical request goes to 3 or 4 carriers, and the replies come back over a day or two in different formats: a rate in the body, a PDF, a one-line reply on a forwarded thread. Rate management means each reply is read, tied to the job it belongs to, and lined up in one comparison for whoever chooses the carrier.
Does the agent choose the carrier or book the truck?
It depends on the action, and each action has its own setting. The quote agents send a quote on their own when the price is under your ceiling, and the booking agent books a quoted shipment the customer accepted. A price over your ceiling, a lane your rules do not cover, or a change to a booked order goes to a person with the facts attached. The agent write-event journal is protected from application edits and deletion.
What happens to a quote that arrives 2 days later?
It still lands in the right place. The agent matches the late reply to the original request by lane, reference, and thread, adds it to the comparison, and flags the update. Nobody re-opens the inbox to hunt for it, and a better rate that arrives after the first replies is not lost to inbox depth. Matching an email that arrives outside the request thread, such as in a shared mailbox, is inbox triage, which is in pilot.
Do our carriers have to change how they quote?
No. Carriers keep replying by email as they do today. The agent reads the email and any attachment; nothing about the request side changes except that your team stops re-keying replies. A first agent starts as a scoped pilot on your own documents. We need access to the mailbox, sample documents, and a login to your TMS. It goes live when the agent matches your team's work on real shipments, one action at a time.
See it track a rate request.
Bring a real document and watch an agent take it to a finished draft while you’re on the call.
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