When a forwarder has freight that is ready to be transported. He or she will need to find a carrier with trailer space to transport the freight.
The forwarder will usually look into his/her own network of carriers to find someone to transport the freight. This usually happens by telephone or email, where the forwarder dispatcher calls or emails a carrier he\she has worked with before and lets them know that they have freight that needs to go from A to B by a certain day and time. If the carrier has availability, he may give the forwarder a quote/price right then and there or he’ll contact the forwarder a short while later via email or telephone to provide a quote/price.
The forwarder will then document this somewhere and then check to see if a better price is possible elsewhere (yes this generally happens when the market is not as tense as it is right now).
As you can see this is not the most structured or formalized process and it provides room for mistakes.
For the forwarder, receiving quotes over the telephone can be quite tricky to enforce, as the carrier could easily change their mind on the price because there was no documented quotation sent to the forwarder if something like this happens. It’s likely that the relationship between this carrier and forwarder could end after this transaction.
Why does this happen? The carrier may get calls from more forwarders looking for space and realize the demand is high for a particular route, and that he can up the price to make more because his trailer space is worth more than it was before he knew about this demand.
It is also time-consuming for the forwarder to have to request quotes one by one and then receive them one by one too. It takes time to contact each carrier individually and essentially repeat the same information over and over again.
The next issue here is that when all of the quotes come in, the forwarder is typically writing them down on a piece of paper / or typing them into an excel table to be able to compare the different prices and / drop of times.
On the other hand, carriers are often left in the dark after sending a quote, most forwarders don’t contact the carrier again if they’ve awarded the order to someone else. This impacts the carrier resource management and planning because they’re saving space for freight that they haven’t won and could even be saying no to freight from other forwarders.
What are Quotation requests on TrustedTrucks and how do they work?
On TrustedTrucks dispatchers from both carrier and forwarder companies manage quotations differently. The process is straightforward and less error-prone.
It all begins with a forwarder looking for a carrier with space. The forwarder will log in to TrustedTrucks, open the Quotation Request section, and input the freight details, pick-up, and drop-off locations, and times. Followed by the requirements that need to be met for the particular freight to be transported correctly, e.g. refrigeration.
After adding this information into the quotation request form the forwarder can then search through a database of carriers on the TrustedTrucks network and use filters to find carriers who meet certain requirements like, being based in Berlin, having refrigeration capabilities, and of course being qualified (meaning being pre-screened for licenses and insurance).
Once the forwarder has found the right carriers, the carriers can be marked, then the forwarder can send the quotation request to all of them with just one click.
If the forwarder couldn’t find a suitable carrier on TrustedTrucks but has one in mind, he can simply add the carrier’s email address into the invitation screen and send them the quotation request too.
After sending the quotation requests, the forwarder can monitor this request from one screen and compare the quotes as they come in. It’s less time-consuming to prepare and send quotations and it’s easier to pick the best quote every time.
What does this look like for the carrier?
Once a forwarder has sent a Quotation Request, the carrier will receive a notification in TrustedTrucks or via email.
If the notification comes via TrustedTrucks, the carrier will click on it and then be directed to the Quotation Request Details page.
If the Carrier clicks on the link in the email notification, he/she will be directed to the Quotation Request Details page.
From this page, the carrier will be able to see what the freight is and where it needs to be picked up from and delivered to as well as additional information provided by the forwarder.
From the same page, the carrier can create a quote and send it to the forwarder. All the carrier has to do is enter a price, leave an optional message and click “send quote”. The forwarder will then receive a notification of the quote, in the TrustedTrucks app and via email.
If the forwarder accepts the quote, the carrier will be notified and asked to confirm the order. Once the carrier has clicked “confirm” a legally binding contract has been created between the carrier and forwarder. Additionally, upon confirmation, a tour PDF will be created and available for the carrier to download.
Note, once the carrier has confirmed the order, every other carrier that has provided a quote for this order too, will be notified that it is no longer available. This will help these carriers to manage their resources better.
Improved data integration and order auditability thanks to the blockchain
Thanks to the use of the Blockchain in the TrustedTrucks application. Every transaction between the carrier and forwarder is recorded on an immutable database. This means that every negotiation, quoted price or awarded order is always accessible in its original form. If either party wants to go back on an offer or claim to have offered something different to what was agreed upon, the original information can always be checked again. These orders are associated with a unique ID making it easier to obtain visibility into the entire audit trail for that specific order.
This ensures transparency and trust between carriers and forwarders who may have never worked with each other before.
How is it combined with Qualification Management and how does this make the process better for everyone, and individually?
Who can use it and what are the benefits for each user?
Carrier and forwarder dispatchers can both use this feature to reduce their administrative workload.
Carriers don’t need to send forwarder licensing documentation to win an order and forwarders don’t need to request or review licensing documentation (provided they have qualified the carrier before).
Additionally, when the carrier makes an update to their qualifications, they don’t have to send the updated qualification document to every single forwarder they’re working with, instead, the carrier can simply update the qualification document on their TrustedTrucks profile by uploading the new document, in doing so, every forwarder that the carrier has worked with on TrustedTrucks will be able to see that the carriers documents have been updated, provided the carrier has granted these forwarders permissions to access their qualifications.
What subscription level is it available on?
As of now sending quotations is free for all carriers on TrustedTrucks regardless of the subscription level.
For forwarders on TrustedTrucks, this feature is available on a 3-month trial. Once the trial has expired and you’d like to keep making use of the feature, you would need to have a subscription level of premium and above.
If you are a forwarder and you’d like to trial Quotation Request on TrustedTrucks please complete this form and our team will get back to you in 48 hours.
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