Quoting Freight: How to Price a Lane
Pricing a lane starts with your real cost per mile, not the rate the shipper throws out first. Quoting freight well means you build the number from the bottom up — cost, then margin, then a hard look at whether the load is worth taking at all. Get the order wrong and you’ll win loads that lose money. What does it mean to price a lane? A lane is a specific origin-destination pair you move freight on repeatedly or are being asked to quote for the first time — say, Dallas to Atlanta on a dry van. Pricing a lane means working out what it actually costs you to run that route, then deciding what rate covers that cost and still leaves a margin worth your trailer space. ...