Most businesses run a freight tender to answer one question: who is cheapest. A tender will answer it. It also produces far more information than a rate card, and most of that is thrown away the moment a carrier is picked.
The lane list is the first finding.
Before a single quote comes back, building an accurate lane list surfaces things nobody had written down in one place. Every origin and destination, with real volumes and real frequencies. Lanes running below the volume that makes them worth a truck.
Two lanes that could be one run, set up by different people at different times.
A destination serviced weekly out of habit when the sales data says fortnightly would do.
None of that needs a carrier quote. It is what happens when freight is looked at as one network instead of a series of bookings.
What the spread of quotes tells you.
Once quotes come back, the headline number is the least interesting part. The useful read is the spread. A lane where every carrier prices within a few per cent is usually a competitive lane with good backhaul and nothing unusual about it. A lane where one carrier sits well above the rest is telling you something structural.
Awkward geography, poor backhaul or a service requirement such as a timed slot or a hand unload that not every carrier wants.
That lane is worth asking why it exists in its current form, rather than taking the lowest quote and moving on.
The question a tender does not ask.
A standard tender asks carriers to price the network as it stands. It does not ask whether the network should look like that. Above a certain volume a dedicated vehicle beats a per movement rate. Two lanes may be one distribution run. None of that appears when the tender's only job is to reprice what is already there.
That is the difference between procurement and a network review. Procurement answers what you should pay for this. A network review asks whether this is the right thing to be paying for.
With a lane file, or a rough idea of your routes, the route review is the quickest way to find out which question needs answering.
Runs set years ago, with stops bolted on since.
Running the tender
What does a freight tender timeline look like, and what goes in the pack?
| Week | Step | What decides it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | Build the lane list from twelve months of consignments | Origin, destination, pallets, weight, frequency, access at each end, window. The lane list is the tender; everything else is a cover letter. |
| 3 | Issue the pack to four to six carriers | Enough to see a spread, few enough that each one prices it properly. |
| 4 to 5 | Questions, site visits, clarifications in writing to everyone | A carrier who visits the dock prices the dock; one who does not prices a guess. |
| 6 | Quotes back, priced against last year's actual consignments | Apply each rate card to the real year. The summary page price and the real price are different numbers. |
| 7 | Shortlist two, test the service | A fortnight of live consignments on the hardest lanes, measured from the POD. |
| 8 | Award, with the KPIs and the review date in the contract | DIFOT by lane, damage rate, invoice accuracy, a quarterly review and a rate mechanism that is written down. |
The pack checklist. The lane list with volumes by month, the access and window at every regular address, pallet dimensions and weights by product group, dangerous goods and temperature requirements if any, the service expected on each lane (next day, two day, dedicated), the POD and invoice detail required, the KPIs and how they will be measured, the fuel levy mechanism you will accept, the term and the review cadence, and the date by which quotes are due with the format they must come back in so they can be compared line by line.
A tender run this way takes about eight weeks and produces a contract you can measure. One run from a rate card comparison takes a fortnight and produces the next tender. The procurement review runs it with you or for you, priced on the consultancy page.