Ask your logistics manager how Carrier A’s pricing compares to Carrier B’s for the same shipment. Watch them reach for a spreadsheet, a calculator, and probably a cup of coffee.
It’s not incompetence. Freight pricing was never designed to be compared, and it’s a system problem that costs manufacturers real money every single day.
The problem: freight rate cards are like a 10,000-item menu with no standard format
Every carrier builds their rates differently. One charges by physical weight, another by volumetric weight with a different multiplier. One splits the UK into 12 distinct zones; another prices by county. One puts weight breaks in rows, another in columns.
One prices per pallet, another per loading meter, another per 100kg, meaning you calculate a coefficient, find the weight break, then find the zone. Even two salespeople at the same carrier will send completely different spreadsheets.
Fuel surcharges update weekly for some, monthly for others. Then come the extras:
- Peak season surcharges (defined differently by each carrier)
- Remote area fees (each carrier has their own list of “remote” postcodes)
- Labor cost adjustments
- Road toll pass-throughs
- Energy surcharges separate from fuel surcharges
- Residential delivery charges
- And the list continues…
A single shipment quote requires pulling data from multiple tables, applying the correct surcharges for that specific week, and using the right calculation formula for that carrier. Multiply this across 5-10 carriers and you’re looking at hours of work for what should be a simple question: “Who’s cheapest for this shipment?”
The hidden cost: manufacturers limit carriers to stay sane
Most manufacturing companies respond rationally: they limit their carrier relationships.
Pick two or three partners. Build relationships. Accept that you’re probably overpaying on some lanes because the alternative – managing more carriers – costs more in overhead than you would save.
This creates a strange situation. You might have 50 potential carriers who could handle your freight. You use five. Not because the others are worse, but because you can’t practically evaluate them.
Why is it inefficient?
- No real competitive pressure on pricing
- Limited backup options when capacity tightens
- Can’t optimise by shipment type (some carriers excel at heavy pallets, others at small parcels, and so forth)
- Regional specialists with better rates never get considered
The bottom line: If you’re shipping thousands of loads annually and paying 8-20% above optimal, that’s margin walking out the door.
Why legacy TMS platforms haven’t fixed this
Transport management systems (TMS) have existed for decades. So why does this problem persist?
Most legacy platforms assume carriers will adapt to their required data formats, or that you’ll manually rebuild every rate card inside their system. Neither happens smoothly.
Carriers have their own systems. They send pricelists as Excel files, PDFs, even Word documents. Each formatted their own way, in their own language, with their own layout and logic.
Legacy enterprise TMS platforms typically require:
- Structured freight pricing data in specific templates
- Manual re-entry of carrier pricing
- Per-carrier integration fees (thousands to tens of thousands per carrier)
- Months of implementation time
The result is that many manufacturers implement a TMS and still can’t easily compare prices across all their carriers.
The modern approach: let the rate card format be the carrier’s problem
The breakthrough in modern freight rate management isn’t better data entry, but eliminating data entry altogether.
A new generation of TMS software can ingest carrier rate cards in whatever chaotic format the carrier sends. Weight breaks in rows or columns. Zones by postcode, by city name, by kilometre. Per-pallet, per-loading-meter, per-100kg coefficients. PDFs, spreadsheets, documents in any language. The software interprets the underlying pricing logic rather than demanding a standard format.
This is the philosophy behind Cargoson’s transport management software. Rather than forcing carriers to conform, a combination of expert review and AI processes each carrier’s pricelist, then stores the logic so the system calculates prices automatically. Your carrier doesn’t change anything. Your team doesn’t re-key anything.
What this means day-to-day: when your logistics team creates a shipment, they see calculated prices from every contracted carrier instantly. Real prices based on current rates and surcharges, not estimates. Transit times alongside.
Real-world example: How Bolt expanded their carrier pool
Bolt manages electric scooter logistics across Europe. Previously, the manual complexity of comparing rates meant the team physically couldn’t check every option. They admitted that “logistics management became too complex,” so they often skipped relevant carriers.
By automating the comparison process, they fixed the bottleneck and achieved two clear outcomes:
- Market reach. They can now “involve a wider range of partners” for every shipment, which ensures competitive pressure on every lane.
- Negotiation power. Instead of guessing at volumes, they extract precise data on carrier usage. This provides “valuable input in price negotiations,” and transforms daily shipping data into financial leverage during contract renewals.
Five questions to ask your logistics team on Monday
Before evaluating any technology, understand your current state:
- How many carriers could we use vs. how many do we actually use? The gap represents untapped savings.
- Pick any shipment leaving the warehouse today. Can you show me the exact price comparison for it across all our carriers in under 60 seconds? If they can’t do it for one specific load while you are watching, they aren’t doing it for the thousands of loads when you aren’t.
- When did we last add a new carrier? If it’s been years, the comparison overhead is probably why.
- Can you see transit times alongside prices before booking? Cheapest isn’t best if it adds three days to delivery.
- What happens when our primary carrier has no capacity? If scrambling is the answer, your backup process needs work.
The real barrier is habit
The old objection – “our carriers won’t provide rate data in the required format” – is solved. Modern systems read whatever format carriers send.
The remaining barrier is simpler: habit.
Logistics teams built workflows around limited carrier pools because that’s what was manageable. Expanding to fifteen carriers feels like more work, even when the comparison and booking process is automated.
If you’re shipping thousands of loads annually across multiple carriers and can’t currently answer “who’s cheapest for this shipment?” in under 60 seconds, you’re likely overpaying between 8-20% annually.
Read more at www.cargoson.com
Tanel Vaarmann, Chief Commercial Officer, Cargoson TMS
20+ years in logistics. Ex-board member at a top global logistics company. Co-founded Cargoson TMS after seeing how much complexity shippers deal with that software should handle. Believes in common sense and diplomacy.
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