Freight quote from RFQ

Purpose

Produce a defensible freight quote from the request and the company’s rate and margin rules.

Scope

Road, ocean, air, and multimodal freight requests where rates, surcharges, and customer terms are available in scope. Excluded: rate procurement, booking, carrier selection execution, and binding commercial approval.

Data basis

• RFQ, lane and shipment details, rate table, surcharge list, customer terms, margin policy, and prior comparable quotes.
• The fixed records, tables, or folders in the skill scope that hold the relevant history or schema.

Result

A quote draft, calculation sheet, and assumptions record that expose every included and excluded cost.

Quality criteria

• Origin, destination, mode, equipment, cargo, timing, and trade terms are captured or marked missing.
• Every rate and surcharge has a source and unit basis.
• The calculation reconciles base rate, accessorials, margin, and total.
• Validity and exclusions are explicit.
• Unknown shipment details are assumptions or clarification points, never hidden.

Instructions

Match the request to the narrowest valid rate basis and do not mix currencies or units without documenting conversion. Separate pass-through charges from margin-bearing charges. Use the customer’s pricing rules before generic defaults. If multiple scenarios are plausible, show them separately and identify the decision variable. Preserve the rate version or effective date used.

Adapt before use

Keep the source trail close to every conclusion and preserve the difference between a source fact, a calculated value, an assumption, and a recommendation. Use stable identifiers across the document and sheet so a reviewer can move from a summary statement to the underlying row and source. Prefer a complete, transparent partial result over a confident answer built on missing evidence.

• Add current rate tables, surcharge rules, and validity conventions.
• Define customer margin tiers and currency conversion rules.
• Specify which accessorials are included by default.
• Add approval thresholds for exceptional or low-margin quotes.