Rating & Pricing

Freight rating engine: quoting fast is easy. Quoting accurately is not

Most LTL margin is not lost at quote time. It is lost weeks later, when the carrier reprices a wrong class, an un-rounded dimension, or a missed residential flag.

Two-layer Markup

// carrier dimension and customer dimension configured separately

Layer 1 — carrier markup

Set per carrier and per mode, used to normalize differing cost bases across carriers.

Layer 2 — customer tier

Pricing templates plus customer-specific rules, applied per mode across LTL, truckload, drayage and parcel.

Hard price floor

Whatever the rules say, sell price never drops below cost. The floor lives in the pricing service, not in a reviewer’s judgement.

Stopping rebills before tender

each maps to a rebill category we have actually eaten

1 — Commodity, dimensions, weight, count

cm/kg converted and rounded up, matching how carriers actually bill

2 — Density → freight class

without piece count there is no real density — it blocks rather than guesses

3 — NMFC validation

only codes that exist; grouped codes are chosen by the customer, then the class is locked

4 — Accessorials and limits

residential, appointment, liftgate, oversize, stackability — all passed through

5 — All carriers quoted in parallel

the same shipment description goes to every carrier, so the rates are comparable

6 — The price you quote

sell price after both markup layers — the only number the customer sees

// Steps 1–4 exist to avoid rework: miss a class or an accessorial and the carrier reprices after pickup. That bill arrives late — long after you quoted the customer.

NMFC & freight class

A built-in library of 6,663 NMFC entries with notes (try it yourself in the NMFC lookup tool), and density mapped to standard breaks (see the freight class calculator). If a code cannot be grounded it is left empty — never invented. A fabricated code always comes back as a rebill.

Dimension & weight normalization

Metric input converts and rounds up to inches and pounds through one shared routine on both ends, so stored values match how carriers actually bill.

Stackability & linear feet

Stackability determines the footprint a shipment occupies, and therefore its price. The flag must reach the carrier intact — omit it and the quote is silently understated until the rebill arrives. We validate it before tender.

Residential & accessorials

Address classification happens before rating. Residential, appointment and liftgate are then applied per each carrier’s own rules rather than uniformly.

Traceability

you must be able to explain any price, months later

Every quote stores the carrier’s raw response alongside a pricing snapshot — which carrier, which rule, what markup, what fuel and accessorials applied at that moment. Disputes get settled from records, not recollection.