From RFQ email to freight quote

Step 1 · Classify: what is this email?

Not every email with the word 'quote' in it is a new request. A sales inbox mixes four different things: a new rate request, a customer asking for a change on an existing quote (another port, another date, another container), internal correspondence about a quote already handled, and noise (marketing, automatic confirmations, threads with no question).

Classifying well is what prevents duplicates. A change on an existing quote handled as a new request creates two quotes for the same shipment, with two reference numbers and two versions of the truth. Our rule: when in doubt, the email is left for the salesperson to decide. An unclassified request beats a duplicate.

Step 2 · Extract what the Incoterm requires, not everything

An international freight quote doesn't need 'all the data'; it needs the data that request's Incoterm requires. An FOB Shanghai request starts at the port: origin port, destination, container type and count, commodity and estimated date. An EXW request starts at the seller's warehouse: you also need the exact pickup address and origin charges. Asking a customer for data their Incoterm doesn't require delays the quote and signals that the forwarder doesn't know how to quote.

One piece of data is never assumed: dimensions for loose cargo (LCL or air), because the chargeable basis comes from it. Everything else the house usually assumes (a standard weight for a full container, a reference departure date, a generic description) is assumed and written into the quote as a declared assumption. Assuming without declaring is where later disputes come from; asking what could have been assumed is where late quotes come from.

Step 3 · Check your own tariffs first

Before writing to a supplier, the forwarder already has information: current carrier contracts, recent rates by lane, destination surcharges in its own catalogue. Some requests can be quoted entirely from own tariffs; others need only one leg (the international freight, or the inland move at destination). The rule is to ask suppliers only for what's missing.

Step 4 · Request supplier rates and wait for the replies

The rate request goes out by email: one email per category (ocean, air, road), with that category's suppliers in BCC so they don't see each other, and with the validity you need. Road usually goes separately because different suppliers quote it.

Replies are neither immediate nor orderly: each supplier answers when it can, hours or days later, one by one. Each reply is recorded as it came, without marking a winning option yet. Destination surcharges are not taken from the supplier but from the forwarder's internal catalogue; if the supplier sends them too and they don't match, the catalogue wins and the difference is noted.

Step 5 · Build the options and set the margin

With rates recorded, the options are built: per supplier, with total cost and transit time. One rule separates a good process from a dangerous one: no figure is calculated or estimated; every figure is transcribed from what the supplier wrote. If the supplier didn't give a line item, that item stays empty, not interpolated.

A person sets the margin. That is not a limitation of the process; it's where automation ends. How much to charge this customer in this negotiation is a commercial decision that changes with the relationship, the volume and the moment. The only reasonable exception is contracted pricing, where the markup is already an agreed rule.

Step 6 · Send only what the customer should read

The quote goes to the customer as a draft until someone at the forwarder approves it. And the customer receives only what they should read: never the cost, the supplier's name, the profit or the internal routing. In a sample of pricing emails at a forwarder we work with, 41% had the profit written in and 32% named the supplier. That leak isn't a software problem; it's a process problem that software can close.

How long it takes today, measured

At a freight forwarder we work with, the median time from a request being assigned to the quote going out was 6 hours, measured over 69 cases in July 2026. And the pricing team asked the customer follow-up questions in only 5.9% of 202 conversations. That second number matters more than it looks: the manual process sets a high bar, and a system that asks too much makes the process worse, not better.

We publish these figures as a reference for the manual process, not as savings. Measurement with an agent uses the same start and end definition, split by ocean, air and road, import and export, and business hours; without those cuts, any improvement percentage is made up.

What gets automated and what doesn't

• Automated: classifying the email, extracting the data by Incoterm, declaring assumptions, checking tariffs, sending rate requests, recording replies and building the options.
• Decided by a person: the margin and final price, approval of anything going to the customer, and the exceptions: DDP (requires pre-calculating duties), loose cargo without dimensions, and an ambiguous origin under EXW or FCA.
• That is how Vera, Flettia's quoting employee, works: inside the email and systems the forwarder already uses, with those rules fixed from day one.

More from the blog

• What to ask for by Incoterm before quoting: the checklist a freight forwarder actually usesQuoting
• Bill of lading tracking: what works and what doesn'tTracking
• PIL container tracking by number (PCIU, PILU)Tracking