" Asking for Rates"

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PackRat

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"CG Group ... sorry to hear about the family emergency. Hope all is well now.

I can't speak for other carriers, but here's what really bothers me about every load offer asking for a rate ... It looks as though you are trying to skim as much as possible off the carrier. Whether that is true or not is neither here nor there, but the fact is that just asking gives that impression. So, for me, I just don't bother with those requests. They always leave me with the feeling that, rightly or wrongly, I've been taken.
If you want me to do work for you, then give me the rate you are willing to pay. I will either be able to do it for that, or I won't. No harm, no foul. We'll try again on the next one."

Hi Michael,

I used your quote and created a New Thread so as not to confuse the original one with this question/topic of discussion:

How do you handle people asking for rates is if they don't have a rate for it? We get "one offs" all the time that we have to call carriers, some times ones we haven't done business with, and I always let them know that we don't have a rate in the system as we haven't done one before. Another perspective is why would you want to know what the load pays? Isn't that moving something for someone else's potential "costing". Please note this is for discussion purposes and is no way an attack on you....just thought it would make good conversation!
PR
 
Yes, and how often have we all heard, "Oh that rate is too high." And usually after being told that they don't have a rate yet.

Just sayin...
 
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Now that's funny Freight Broker, and quite true so it seems based on the responses to this thread.
 
Good idea starting a new thread, because this really is an excellent topic. No, I do not take offense :)

First off, suppose you and I were doing business and most of the time you tell me you have a load from "A" to "B" and it pays "X", then every so often you come with I have a load from "C" to "D" and I need a rate on that. That's cool, I'll give you the rate I need, and it will either work for you or it won't.
On the other hand, if every time you said to me I have a load from "E" to "F" and I need a rate, then you and I would eventually stop doing business because I simply don't have the time or patience to work you out a rate every time we talk. As a professional broker, you really shouldn't need my input on rates for 90% of the work you do. You should really only need carrier input if the route is an oddball one, or if you are doing an RFP or RFQ.
As for wanting to know what the load pays, no it's not really working for someone else's costing. A broker knows that they need to make a specific dollar amount or percentage, whichever is greater, on every transaction, and I'm fine with that, as long as what's left is enough to cover my costs (the constant part) and give me some profit (the variable part). My profit can be variable because I may have had greater profit in one direction and can lighten up a little in the reverse direction to keep the wheels turning. The bottom line is a carrier has to keep wheels turning, a broker does not. The very minute I put "meat-in-the-seat" that driver has to make a weeks pay, no matter what, so I have to keep wheels going 'round and 'round. I need to keep that driver happy. He has a skill set that is vital to my operation. A broker does not have that constraint. I do not mean to belittle a dispatchers efforts by any stretch of the imagination ... I am one myself ... but it does not take a skill set to fill an empty seat in a brokers office. It's actually more of an art form ... anyone can draw a stick figure ... some just do it more elegantly than others.
There's another way to look at it ... pay me fair and I'll be there when you need me, and by "me" I mean good reliable carriers (GRC). Take the lowest cost supplier (LCS) every time and that's all that will be left ... LCSs with questionable service commitments. You can go thru an awful lot of LCS's before you realize you need to come back to me or lose your customer, but by then I am gone, or I have no more use for you. Then where does that leave you? With a great customer but no more GRCs to service that customer.

I could go on and on and on on this subject nearly forever, but I'll get off my soap box for now and let others get a word or two in ... after this last request ... sit back and take a long hard look at the transportation industry as it is today, carefully study who the players are, and what they are doing ... it's an eye opening exercise.
 
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I get the impression that the problem with "what's your rate" begins more with an inexperienced broker, or their inexperienced customer service reps. I think that like all businesses, brokers are in this to turn a profit. Perhaps in that effort, staff are pressured or influenced (or maybe even rewarded) to generate as much profit as possible on each transaction. Inexperienced dispatchers are not unique to the brokerage industry, and are just as common on the carrier side as we have read in various threads on this site. As Michael so eloquently wrote, a professional broker knows what the rate should be for 90% of the lanes he moves. Asking a supplier what he charges for a specific job, or asking a customer what they expect to pay is, isn't all that strange. Where I do take exception with Michael, is in his description of brokerage dispatchers. Our dispatchers, perhaps like yours, have to discern between the truth and a "story" as to why a load hasn't delivered or picked-up. They have to know that their once piece of LTL matches up with the almost FL that their co-worker has. Sounds kinda like a carriers operations office, doesn't it. Sure, we don't talk directly to the driver, but in essence we do, through your dispatchers. I can say with confidence that my staff are not the ones who ask, "what's your rate" on a lane we've serviced for years, and I would put their geographic knowledge up against any carrier's dispatcher. One last thing. I absolutely hate the concept that brokers "skim off the cream". If the rate the broker has from his customer is a good one, it is the result of some hard work, you know, getting out of the office and banging on some doors! If you want to get these "cream laden" rates, do that work yourself, don't knock the guy who already did it! This soap box is now closed for the night.
 
I get many calls from brokers regarding freight that they have and I always ask what the rate is. If I am told they don't have one I ask if they have a number in mind? There are times where we need to make decisions about our trucks. If I get a call about a load and I have a truck that has been sitting for a day or so, I may consider taking the load to get the truck moving. Should I ask for $2.50/mile on my 600 miles of deadhead? Probably not. I will ask for the rate and if there is any room to cover some deadhead miles. There may be, there may not be. If I don't justify my asking price by mentioning how far I will be running my truck, the broker won't see why I'm asking so much, only that I'm crazy expecting that much money. I may move my truck for cheaper than usual, I might get what I want because the broker has a desperate customer.

"Some days your the windshield, some days your the bug!!" :D
 
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I love this thread, Michael you said everything that needs to be said on the situation perfectly. We have this 1 young pup on the brokerage side of a large carrier that is buying up everything these days so when he asks for a rate (and he does on every email) the response from us is "What would your trucks charge for this route and we can probably do the same?" but he never has an answer we just laugh and ignore him but I will say this he is persistent.
 
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Their are an awful lot of good brokers and there are lots of good carriers. The problem lies in the rest of the industry. Some brokers are all about themselves. By that I mean they charge champagne rates but want carriers to work for a beer budget. I myself have a problem with some brokers who EVERY call is, what is your rate and they will call day after day asking for rates. If after say two weeks of daily calls and still not a stick of freight why should I as a carrier be their rate department?

Loaders, I think you will find a vast majority of the carriers on this fourm have their own direct customers. I know a lot of the screen names and can match them up to the carriers. I myself run well under 50% brokered freight but that being said I also rate 95% or better of my own lanes. I will call a couple known carriers and brokers on lanes, I do not or have not run to get a rate but that is to cover my ass. I am usually well within the ballpark on the rate I was thinking before the calls..

Why do a lot of brokers need to do it for Chicago loads?? If you cannot rate Chicago in or out with out looking for rates???
That is where my post came from in the CG thread. It is not about the rate at that point it is a Dutch auction looking to screw a carrier that has a truck sitting and is willing to work for nothing just to get a load. These for the most part are the very same carriers using not so reputable factoring companies and seem to have very questionable service for the most part. They are also the very same carriers posted all over this board that have double, triple or co-brokered to use a coined term I found on this board.

Reputable carriers and brokers working together as a cohesive unit is all good. Brokers and carriers looking to screw everyone and anyone, ya well not so much. I will answer rate calls and give rates but at the point where I feel I am being used as the rate department that is when the spigot needs to be turned off. A good broker will need help now and then rating just as a carrier will. A bad broker who has no idea of the industry will call and get a rate all the time in my mind. It all comes down to if you know your business you should have your rates inline just by knowing the ebbs and flows of the industry. If you need to call and get rates from carriers for one skid to Podunk Idaho I understand but one skid to Chicago should just flow out..
 
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I have been doing this for about 11 years now as a broker and I find myself now more than ever asking what the carrier feels is an appropriate rate. Mostly it seems to be inbound freight that what I'm expecting is inadequate. The whole transportation market has changed drastically in the past few years and ideal lanes change like the wind.

I find a lot of the time that offering a rate to a carrier who has a fair amount of deadhead usually gets shot down, asking for a rate will avoid this part of the conversation and I will almost every time try the carriers rate with my customer to see if we can get them out of the area they're stuck in. Most of my customers and I have a good relationship that if I'm way out of their budget, they'll tell me and I can counter offer, that is the only time I will go back and try to cut a carriers rate down.

I do find it troublesome that some brokers will talk to 50 carriers just to find the cheapest rate and then jump on it even though they know they're probably going to get terrible service. Doing that, you're just promoting those bottom of the barrel carriers that should really just save everyone a head ache and close their doors.

That all being said, we do everything we can to quote without contacting a carrier but sometimes in order to keep everyone happy and keep competitive at the same time, it has to be done.
 
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broker asking carrier for a rate = broker screwing carrier
carrier asking broker for a rate = carrier just trying to earn a living

I'm not trying to play the sides against each other as I think we're all healthier when we work together...and many of us operate as both carrier and broker....but aren't the above scenarios basically the same thing? There are X amount of available profit dollars...and both parties want to maximize their share of X while understanding that the other party needs a fair operating share as well.

I'm having new lighting installed at my house today...the electrician who quoted me never once asked how much I wanted to pay for the job...he told me how much he was going to charge for the job

fwiw: I strongly agree with Rob's statement: "I myself have a problem with some brokers who EVERY call is, what is your rate and they will call day after day asking for rates. If after say two weeks of daily calls and still not a stick of freight why should I as a carrier be their rate department?"
 
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In no other industry do potential vendors get offended when they're asked to provide pricing info. Yes, potential customers are trying to get the best price.. absolutely.. it happens in trucking just as it happens when you go to the store or purchase a car. Yes, price matters and sometimes (but certainly not always!) the lowest price wins. Speaking for myself, I rarely go for the lowest price option because my current vendors make it so got dang easy for me to do business with them. I'm never offended when a shipper asks for my rate... I know he/she is simply shopping around, and that's part of the business too. Sometimes I get the business and sometimes I don't. I'm sure I'd never get the business if I got offended at every request for a quote.
 
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I have a feeling the underlying problem is that the good carriers who provide good service at good rates are sick of competing against unreliable carriers who provide crap service at bottom-feeding rates. Personally I don't blame them...as I said in the other thread I get scared of guys who are undercutting a reasonable rate...

with so many carriers muddying up the waters it's getting hard for the good ones to distinguish themselves from the bad
 
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busterknoxville said:
I'm having new lighting installed at my house today...the electrician who quoted me never once asked how much I wanted to pay for the job...he told me how much he was going to charge for the job
Click to expand...

Generally the person providing the service always provides the rate - just like the electrician above. The difference between a carrier/[broker/customer] relationship is that everything is done by a one line email-ie. what is your rate from x-y?. An electrician comes out, reviews what needs to be done, identifies the scope of work, makes the customer understand what is required and then provides the quote for work. This process can take a few days. (It took me 2 weeks for a plumber to come give me a quote.). In the computer industry, for medium/large jobs, you need to pay for a scope of work to be done. The supplier will come sit with you about your needs and expectations, leave and send you the scope of work. Payment needs to be received on the scope of work and then they will prepare the quote. Three completely different ways of procuring a supplier.

Players in our industry has forced all of us to a level where the expectation is that a quote should be obtained and submitted by the end of the day. Critical details such as weight, size, number of loads per month, loading times, unloading times and requirement of appointments are completely overlooked. Somehow the freight needs to move today by EOB but the shipper took weeks to prepare the product. They just need a number and the rest of the information will come and we all have to deal with it. Try this with the electrician and you won't get an answer.

Personally, I don't like the situation the industry is in regarding procurement but you can't turn the Titanic. We need a gentle force by the industry back onto the freight payers to understand that its just not a number. For those people who e-mail daily about their freight needs - ignore them. For very large RFP's I have been requesting that they pay me a nominal fee for my time to fill it out - I will deduct that amount from the first load I ship. (I have been unsuccessful but it starts a conversation.) For new brokers that seem to come out of the woodwork I try to spend at least an hour of conversation with them, before I take any freight, and find out where they came from and what history am I dealing with-trying to get a sense of a business relationship rather than another email address on a distribution list. I try my best to avoid companies who look for the cheapest truck-you get to know who they are.

It would make me very happy to get to the procurement method that the electrician above uses. I am sure that if Jim L had the electrician come out bi-annually for work that needs to be done and never receives it; he will stop coming out.

Maybe one day.........
 
Jim L said:
Players in our industry has forced all of us to a level where the expectation is that a quote should be obtained and submitted by the end of the day. Critical details such as weight, size, number of loads per month, loading times, unloading times and requirement of appointments are completely overlooked. Somehow the freight needs to move today by EOB but the shipper took weeks to prepare the product. They just need a number and the rest of the information will come and we all have to deal with it.....
Click to expand...
I have no problem providing rate quotes, but if you don't have the load details how on earth do you expect to get an accurate rate? I can't even count how many times I have heard, "I don't have any weight or product listed here on my paper but just give me your full load rate for dry, skidded freight."
If you can't tell me the basic info like weight and type of product, I'm sorry but I can't help you. For some reason I never seem to receive a second phone call when I tell these brokers to gather the necessary info first and then call me back. Go figure.....
 
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Most of what I do personally is contracted so I don't really need to worry about that sort of thing. Generally when costing something we'll just go through our system for comparable data. If we don't have comparables, then our pricing manager goes out and asks for some from core partners -- not posting on the Link looking for rates as far as I know.

When one deals in the spot world, it's a pain ... because you are dealing with conditions of the day that are not constant. When one deals completely on the spot, there is no choice but to vary the rate. Personally, I'm not a fan. As much as we can from both a customer to broker/carrier standpoint and broker to carrier partner standpoint, it's better to work collaboratively with some sense of normalcy. We get so much more done that way.
 
I have seen electrician and plumber mentioned that give quotes remember they get paid the day they are done not 45 to 145 days later. If a broker wants to pay me on delivery and I have all the info to quote properly then they will get a quote anytime they want.
 
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Score one for PackRat ... quite the topic :)
@Freight Broker ... That really is funny !
@loaders ... Like I said, I'm not belittling a brokerage dispatcher. What I am saying is a brokerage dispatcher does not need to have a skill set like a driver does. You can stand over your dispatcher, train them, and watch them work. I cannot do that with a driver. He's out there on his own, with very little to no supervision at all.
@Rob ... Dutch Auction ... that's the term I was looking for and couldn't think of ... Thank you. BTW ... I never realized you are so eloquent ... LOL

One of my favourite scenarios is when a broker asks me for a rate, I give the rate, and get the reply "Okay, let me see if the shipper still has the freight" ... guess what list you just landed on ... the FO&DBMA list ... LOL ... now, back to my soap box ...

As has been mentioned that carriers get offended by having to give rates, that is not true at all, but look at it from our perspective. We, as carriers, know that, even though the gene pool has been diluted as of late, probably 70% of carriers (maybe a bit more) are good, reliable carriers. The same cannot be said about load brokers, and that is very unfortunate because probably the opposite ratio is true ... there are probably only 30% of the brokers out there that are good, reliable, responsible brokers. The rest are what we carriers have to weed through to find you 30% and that is a very, very frustrating job. It's kind of like going to down town Detroit on a Friday night at 1:00 AM ... you know everyone is carrying a gun, you're just not sure who's got shoot at you, and who's going to shoot for you. You're either dead or alive, and there's no in-between.

Brokers don't understand this frustration because the odds are really pretty reasonable that they will get a good carrier. On the other hand, the odds are pretty reasonable that a carrier will find a bad broker. Take Quebec for example, there are lots and lots of good carriers there, but, and I know G. Roch is going to crucify me for this, how many reliable and responsible load brokers do you find in Quebec? Not many, not many at all, and it is ever so difficult to find them. Yet some carriers still flock to those brokers. The 30% accessing the 70%, and then the 30% wonders why they went broke and the 70% got rich. Nevada is another example ... is there really a legitimate load brokerage or 3PL that is based in Nevada? If there is, please do tell, because I have never heard of one.

So, when you tag every load email with "Please provide rate and availability if interested", it tends to get old and tiresome, and as carriers we start to wonder if this group is really interested in becoming part of the industry, or if they are simply sponges looking to scam as much as they can, as quickly as they can, without ever learning anything, or having any respect for the people they are dealing with in an industry that is absolutely vital to the economy. (That's right ... vital ... car manufacturers can go broke and banks can fail, but if transportation stops, and goods can't get to the marketplace, the economy just doesn't falter or stumble, it halts.) It's okay for a load broker to ask me, or any carrier, for a rate, especially if you are interested in a collaborative relationship. Just don't ask for a rate for the same lane day after day after day. If you haven't figured it out by day two, look for another line of work. You're neither needed or wanted in this industry.

As for CG, what really cinched it for me was their postings (yes, they did it more than once) looking for a carrier with self-unloaders to do 100 mile round trips out of Hudson, ON (P0V 1X0). Really? Are you that oblivious to the industry you want to work in? First of all Hudson is west of Sioux Lookout. It's in the middle of nowhere. There are very few carriers that service that area. Second, self-unloaders are very specialized equipment. Not everyone has $200,000.00 trailers sitting around just waiting for an unknown load broker to call. Third, do you honestly believe that anyone in that specialized segment of the industry doesn't already know the lane you are "quoting", and that they would even bother to give you the time of day, let alone a "Rate and availability if interested"? I am not saying don't try, but what I am saying is there are better ways to handle an opportunity like that than flogging it everywhere and looking like a chimp trying to solve a math problem.

And so endeth my oratory for this morning ... Crap .... I just twisted my ankle getting off this darn soap box :( ... LOL
 
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