That tribal knowledge—what rates are typical, which carriers to trust, what margins are acceptable—is the foundation of freight operations. But when it comes to RFQs, it’s also a bottleneck.
In theory, quoting is simple: get a request, assess cost, respond quickly.
In practice, it’s anything but.
RFQs arrive in inconsistent formats: Excel attachments, long email threads, PDFs with vague requirements, sometimes even screenshots of rate requests from other forwarders. There’s no standard, and there’s no structure. What should be a seamless intake becomes a scavenger hunt. Operators jump between inboxes, shared folders, Slack messages, and mental notes to piece together a response. By the time the quote is ready, someone faster has already won the business.
Freight forwarding is built on relationships and experience, not software. That’s a strength when it comes to customer service—but it’s a weakness when quoting depends on the one person who "knows that lane."
Instead of making quoting smarter, most forwarders throw people at the problem. More junior operators, more spreadsheets, more templates. But the result is the same: delays, inconsistency, and quotes that fall through the cracks.
The truth is, RFQs were never meant to be handled manually at scale. The volume, the variability, and the urgency all outpace what humans can manage with the tools they’ve been given.
The solution isn’t just AI. It’s context-aware automation.
The right quoting engine doesn’t just extract data from RFQs—it understands the nuance. It knows what you charged on this lane last quarter. It knows what margin you need to maintain. It knows which carriers you trust for hazmat, or which lanes require extra handling.
And most importantly, it works where your team already works—inside the inbox, not in some distant dashboard no one remembers to check.
That’s the shift. Not replacing people, but giving your best operators superpowers:
In a world where every minute counts, quoting can’t be an afterthought. It’s not just an operational task—it’s your first impression. Your close rate depends on it.
Freight forwarders that automate quoting aren’t just saving time. They’re closing more deals, delivering more consistent pricing, and freeing up their team to focus on what matters: solving real customer problems.
The future of RFQs isn’t just faster. It’s automatic, intelligent, and finally—scalable.
And it starts with fixing what’s broken today.
