A price, please, by three o'clock
An email comes in from a customer you do not do much work for: a full load, curtain-sider, Leicester to Glasgow, Thursday. Another comes from a regular asking for a price on four pallets to Cornwall. The planner looks up the mileage, thinks about what we charged the last time something went north, considers whether there is a backload and picks a number. Sometimes it is a good number.
Later, nobody can remember how the price was arrived at, and nobody checks whether that load made money.
Why quotes are a guess
The planner knows the roads and knows the market, but the numbers that should anchor a price are not in front of them when they need them.
- Your real cost per mile and per hour for each vehicle type is not written anywhere planners can use.
- Past prices for similar lanes are in invoices, not searchable by route.
- Time at each end, tolls and clean air zone charges are forgotten under pressure.
- Whether a return load is likely changes the price, but that is not visible.
- Quotes go out by email and are not tracked, so you never learn which prices win.
What the guessing costs
Quotes that are too low win work that loses money, and you only find out if someone looks at the load afterwards, which usually nobody does. Quotes that are too high lose work you wanted. Inconsistent prices to the same customer cause awkward conversations. And while planners are pricing, they are not planning. The owner often ends up pricing anything unusual personally, which means quotes wait for one person to be free, and the knowledge of how the business prices never spreads beyond them.
The quoting tool we build
- A quote form (or an email parser for requests that arrive in a common format) captures collection and delivery points, dates, vehicle type, weight or pallet count and any special requirements.
- A routing service calculates miles and drive time for that vehicle, and adds your own allowances for loading, unloading and known waiting at those sites.
- Your cost rates per vehicle type, which your accounts team or accountant helps set, turn miles and hours into a cost, with known tolls and zone charges added.
- The tool shows past loads on similar lanes: what you charged, whether you got the work, and whether there was a return load.
- It suggests a price at the margin you set for that type of work. The planner adjusts and sends, and the quote is logged with its reasoning.
- Won and lost quotes are tracked, so over time you can see where you are consistently too high or too low.
| Input | Today | In the tool |
|---|---|---|
| Distance and time | Map app | Calculated for the vehicle type |
| Cost base | In the owner's head | Your cost rates, applied the same way |
| Comparable loads | Memory | Past lanes with prices and outcomes |
| Extras | Often forgotten | Tolls, zones and site time included |
| Learning | None | Win and loss record per lane |
Quoting afterwards
Planners still price, and still use their knowledge of the market. The difference is that they start from a sensible number and a view of past loads, rather than from nothing. Anyone in the office can prepare a quote that is consistent with how the business prices. And when you review margins, you can see whether the quote tool's suggestions and the final prices are drifting apart, and why.
Checklist for your quoting
- Spot prices depend on who answers the phone.
- You do not know your cost per mile by vehicle type.
- Quotes are not tracked once sent.
- Tolls and waiting are regularly missed from prices.
- You have found out afterwards that a load lost money.