A rate enquiry is an incomplete consignment note #
The facts needed to price a movement are almost exactly the facts the paperwork will later demand.
Article 6(1) of the CMR Convention, in the schedule to the Carriage of Goods by Road Act 1965, requires a consignment note to state the place and date of taking over the goods and the place designated for delivery, a description of the goods and the method of packing, the number of packages and their marks, the gross weight or quantity otherwise expressed, and the charges relating to the carriage.
Strip out the charge, which is the thing being asked for, and that is a rate request. Which tells you something useful about the shape of the work: the office is not gathering information for the quote, it is gathering information for the job, early, from somebody who has not yet committed to giving them the job. We set out the full set and where it reappears on booking in loads.
What is actually missing from most enquiries #
Enquiries arrive short, and they are short in predictable ways. The recurring gaps:
- Weight or dimensions
- A delivery window rather than a delivery date
- Whether the delivery point has a loading bay or needs a tail lift
- Whether anything in the load is hazardous
- Who is paying
Each gap costs a reply and a wait.
That waiting is where most of the elapsed time in a quote goes, and elapsed time is what the customer actually experiences. The same dynamic is described from a different trade on chasing a quote: the work is quick, the round trips are not, and the enquiry that gets answered first often wins regardless of price.
The checks with published answers #
Two questions get asked on almost every enquiry and neither is a matter of opinion.
Does it fit? GOV.UK publishes maximum weights for articulated vehicles by axle count, reaching 44,000kg at six axles, and states that a vehicle is overloaded if it exceeds the weight limits displayed on either the manufacturers' or ministry plates, whether on an axle, gross or train weight. Comparing a declared weight against a plated limit is a comparison.
Is it a day's work? Under the assimilated drivers' hours rules a driver may drive 9 hours a day, extendable to 10 hours twice a week, with 56 hours in a week, and must take breaks totalling at least 45 minutes after no more than 4 hours 30 minutes driving.
Whether a lane can be run out and back in a shift is therefore bounded by fixed numbers. The planner decides what to do about the answer. The answer itself is arithmetic, and the records that evidence it are covered on drivers' hours record keeping.
The constraint most enquiries ignore #
A customer asking whether you can run four more vehicles from January is asking a licensing question dressed as a commercial one. GOV.UK sets out the financial evidence required for an operator licence:
| Licence | First vehicle | Each additional vehicle |
|---|---|---|
| Restricted, heavy goods | 3,100 pounds | 1,700 pounds |
| Standard national or international, heavy goods | 8,000 pounds | 4,500 pounds |
| Standard international, light goods | 1,600 pounds | 800 pounds |
Evidence can be bank or building society statements covering the last 28 days, among other options.
Which parts of a rate request run on rules #
Runs on rules
- Reading an enquiry and extracting the lane, dates, weight and equipment, where the fields are known
- Spotting that an enquiry is missing something you always need, which is a completeness check
- Checking a declared weight against plated limits, which is published arithmetic
- Checking whether the run fits inside a driving shift, where the rules produce the answer
- Knowing which quotes have had no reply for a week, which is date arithmetic on a list
- Turning a decided price into a sent quotation, which is document production
Needs a haulier
- Deciding what the lane is worth this week, which is the reason the business exists
- Deciding whether to take a loss leader for a backload, which is a network decision
- Deciding whether this customer is worth the trouble, which is nobody else's call
The quote turnaround calculator shows what the elapsed time between enquiry and reply is doing to your win rate, and the cost of admin time calculator puts hours against the gathering. What happens after the load runs, when the quoted rate has to become money, is on invoicing against PODs.