Hey, this is Jeremy with Easy Logistics here to talk to you today about freight quotes, when they’re needed, how they are calculated, and how to get the best possible freight rates or freight quote each and every time, some tips and tricks at the end. Let’s just dive right into it.
What types of Freight Shipments do you need a Freight Quote for?
Freight quote generally is reserved for machinery or merchandise that needs to be shipped that is heavier, generally over 150 pounds or more, cumbersome to handle. Generally, the products will be large dimensionally so they’re harder to handle for one man and a dolly.
Shipments that require heavy machinery for Transloading and Deliver
And generally, with a freight quote, the commodity needs complex machinery to be picked up, delivered, transloaded, and that generally entails machinery like forklifts, pallet jacks, or liftgates on the trucks to pick the merchandise up from the ground, or drop it down if you don’t have a dock-to-dock situation.
Shipped on large Commercial Tractor Trailer Trucks
Generally, they’re shipped on tractor-trailer trucks, or big rigs that are 48 to 53 feet, dry van, or flatbed. Even there are some intermediate asset types like straight trucks that are a little bit shorter but generally big dry van over the road trucks. And in general, the merchandise is palletized for ease of pickup, delivery, and transfer so that we can get it with a forklift.
The types of products that lend themselves to freight quotes, again, they’re large, over 150 pounds, heavy, cumbersome to handle, more than one man and one dolly can handle, or just larger pallet size quantities that are shipping per shipment that you’re actually routing.
How are Freight Quotes Calculated? Weight, Dims, Class, Density, Accessorials, Insurance..
How our quote calculated? Basically, they’re based off of the total weight of the shipment, the dimensions of the pallets or total shipments, the freight classification which can go from class 50 to class 500. A lot of that can be based on density, but there’s a lot that goes into it, classifications, and MMSC codes.
And then also assessorials as far as what extra services you need for pickup and delivery like lift gates, or residential delivery, or appointment setting. Because big, heavy freight trucks and tractor-trail trucks are generally moving cargo dock-to-dock, commercial site to commercial site, so the more complicated the delivery scenario, the more that can actually boost the price up as far as assessorials.
And then obviously, insurance value. If you have a very expensive product, it’s going to up the rate because we need to add extra blankets of coverage to make sure that if it does get damaged, you get reimbursed. And then if it’s a hazardous commodity, like a lot of the things that we’re moving recently are electric motorcycles and electric ATVs, and the batteries are really big and powerful so they classify as hazardous, especially if the batteries are shipping separately. So that needs to be segregated on the trailer and it costs more just to make sure that it’s safe.
Weight and Dimension Thresholds for different types of Freight Quotes
LTL Freight Quotes
As far as the max freight quote thresholds, LTL freight quotes, which is less than truckload, are normally up to 12 linear feet of truck space or six standard pallets with the dimensions 48 X 40 X 90 inches. Or if you have 12 stackable pallets that still fit within that cube of twelve linear feet, wall-to-wall, top to bottom, that’s an LTL quote.
Volume and Partial Truckload Freight Quotes
Then the next range is generally considered volume or partial truckload. This is anything that’s 12 feet or 13 feet and beyond, upwards from 7 pallet positions to 14 pallet positions approximately, and from around 5,000 pounds to 40,000 pounds.
Volume freight quotes are generally run with traditional LTL carriers and partial truckload quotes are generally run with truckload carriers, just using part of their truckload space. Some of the benefit is there’s less handling and less transloading on these full truckload shipments. So LTL still gets transloaded to a certain extent but if it’s traveling partial truckload, it’s with one truck and one driver the whole way, on and off.
Full Truckload Freight
And then the third range is obviously full truck load, which is up to 3,000 pounds and 53 foot of truck space or floor space. Generally, that equates to 26 standard pallets, 40 X 48 X 90 inches or so, depending on the door of the truck, whether it’s a swing door or roll up. Some of the benefits of that is it’s way less expensive to ship per unit and then obviously, it’s dedicated if it’s truckload. So it’s one truck, one driver from pickup to delivery. So no handling, no transloading of that nature in-between like LTL.
Tips and Tricks for getting the best possible Freight Rates
Probably, what you really want to get to is maybe some of the tips and tricks that we have for keeping those freight quotes as low as possible and always getting the best freight rate. I have some other more extensive videos on this, but I felt like it was worth diving into.
So the short list would be:
1)Leveraging freight brokerage, which has bigger buying power and better rates with a multitude of carriers to get a better freight quote all the time.
2)Working with carrier direct to get a customer specific tariff or carrier specific tariffs. Generally, the threshold for that is $15,000 a monthly spend so start looking at that. But if you have a carrier in a certain line that’s coming to you, you can reduce your class, reduce the overall cost, get rid of assessorial charges. There’s a variety of ways to push the cost down.
3) Reducing your packaging dimensions and weights, especially if your commodity is density rated because that can add up quick.
4)Shipping more units per shipment or load that you have outgoing can get you a better free quote rate.
5) Reducing the complexity of your pickup and delivery requirements or assessorials as far as residential delivery, liftgate, appointment setting, inside delivery, things of that nature can drive that cost down if you can make it less complex.
Consclusion
Ultimately, if you want us to drill into this because this is what we do all day long, give us a call. We’d be happy to go through your exact requirement and try and get you the best possible freight quotes on a daily basis and make it as automated and easy as possible.
So it’s my company, we’re looking to grow and we’d be honored to help you in any particular way this year. So have a great week.