See where manual freight quoting consumes time, how Freitt prepares a draft for human review, and how to measure weekly savings using your own workload.
A freight quote starts long before anyone types a price into an email. Someone reads the request, opens the packing list, checks the shipment details, finds a current rate, calculates the charges, and prepares a reply. Each task seems manageable. Repeat the sequence throughout the week, alongside customer calls and shipment problems, and quoting can consume hours of attention.
An AI quote desk can reduce that workload by preparing information and drafting quotes for review. For a small freight business, the useful question is where it removes effort from your actual process. Follow the work from request to reply, and the opportunities become easier to see.
Key takeaways
Small tasks add up. Reading attachments, checking rates, and formatting replies create recurring work across the quote desk.
Pricing needs a reliable source. Freitt uses your rate sheets and configured pricing rules to prepare a quote.
Your team keeps the decision. People check the details, resolve exceptions, and send the customer response.
Measure your own savings. Compare manual handling time with assisted handling time, including review and corrections, across a representative set of requests.
Start with the handoffs inside a single request. Shipment details move from an email into a worksheet. Rates move from another workbook into a calculation. The result moves into a customer reply. At each transfer, someone has to check that the information still matches.
The effort grows when a request changes. New dimensions may require another calculation. A different delivery address may change the scope. A colleague taking over needs to understand which details have already been confirmed.
There is also a difference between time spent working and time spent waiting. A quote might need only a short period of active attention yet sit behind other work for much longer. Measure both separately: reducing preparation can free capacity, but someone still needs to review the draft.
That distinction gives a small team a useful starting point. Identify the repeated actions that slow preparation, then decide who will own the next step when a draft is ready.
What is an AI quote desk?
An AI quote desk is a workflow that turns an incoming request for quotation, or RFQ, into a structured draft for a person to check. In freight, that means connecting shipment information with the rates and rules used to price the movement.
Freitt’s quote automation covers air, ocean, and road freight. It reads forwarded requests, prepares pricing from your rate sheets, and drafts a response in your format. Your team reviews and sends it.
The benefit depends on how much preparation your desk repeats. A business handling frequent, similar requests has a different opportunity from one whose quotes regularly require fresh negotiations and unusual service arrangements.
Freight details can be split between the message and a packing list. Freitt’s email-to-quote workflow reads supported attachments and structures fields such as origin, destination, pieces, weight, and dimensions. Uncertain values are flagged. Your reviewer can check the extracted information against the source, with less copying between documents.
A rate lookup involves more than finding a route. The shipment must match the mode, rating basis, and validity period. Freitt’s rate-sheet automation maps existing Excel sheets and excludes expired lines. The draft retains the source behind each charge, giving the reviewer something concrete to verify.
Different freight services use different pricing bases. Air freight may involve chargeable weight; ocean shipments may be priced by container or weight and volume. Freitt applies the relevant basis and presents charges separately. Staff can inspect the calculation and its inputs instead of rebuilding the same arithmetic for every request.
Consistent pricing is easier when the rule is recorded and visible. Freitt’s margins and approvals features apply configured rules and identify which rule produced the price. Customer, lane, and mode margin rules, along with approval routing, are listed as Growth capabilities. Confirm the appropriate plan for your workflow during setup.
Once pricing is prepared, the reply still needs a clear scope, charges, terms, and validity. Freitt drafts that response in your house format. The reviewer checks whether it answers the customer’s request and makes any necessary changes. Less formatting work leaves more attention for the commitments the business is making.
How to measure the hours your team could save
Choose a representative sample and record active handling time from opening the request to sending the reply. Include attachment checks, rate searches, calculations, formatting, and corrections. During a pilot, measure the equivalent assisted workflow, including forwarding, review, edits, and exception handling.
Keep a simple log of request type, minutes spent, edits needed, and reasons for delays. Review it with the people doing the work. Their notes can reveal which requests benefit most and which still need closer manual attention.
Use this calculation:
Weekly hours saved = weekly quotes × average minutes saved per quote ÷ 60.
For illustration only, suppose a team handles 30 quotes weekly and reduces average active handling time from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. That would release five hours per week. These are hypothetical inputs, not measured Freitt customer results or a guaranteed outcome.
Compare similar requests and include difficult cases in the sample. Record setup effort separately and subtract recurring administration from the weekly benefit. Track customer response time as a separate measure, because a prepared draft can still wait for approval.
Use Freitt’s quoting calculator to explore your own assumptions, then replace estimates with observed results. The hours recovered become useful when the team assigns them to customer follow-up, exception resolution, or other work already waiting.
Keep control of rates and customer promises
Make review a defined task. Check the shipment scope, source rate, applicable charges, margin, and validity before sending. Pay particular attention to details that affect the service being offered, including whether collection and delivery are included.
Freitt flags missing valid rates and can draft a carrier inquiry. Your team must obtain the missing information before committing to a price. A clear exception process matters as much as a fast routine quote.
Decide who can resolve unclear shipment details and who approves unusual commercial terms. Give reviewers a short checklist and a clear owner for escalations. Review should end with an accountable decision, rather than a draft moving indefinitely between colleagues.
Keep rate maintenance in the workflow, too. Current source data and prompt human decisions determine how useful automated preparation can be. The business remains responsible for what it promises the customer.
Choose a familiar lane and a current rate sheet. Agree on the quote format, pricing rules, and reviewer before forwarding requests. Include a routine RFQ, an incomplete request, and a case without a valid rate in the pilot. Check whether the workflow handles each appropriately. Expand only when the desk understands the exceptions and can demonstrate that the preparation time recovered exceeds the effort needed to operate it.
It depends on volume, request complexity, source data, and review effort. Measure the change in active handling time across comparable requests, then multiply by weekly volume. Include corrections and exceptions. A result based on your own desk is more useful than a generic savings promise.
Yes. Freitt works with inboxes that support forwarding and maps existing Excel rate sheets during setup. Its FAQ currently describes native Gmail and Outlook connections as upcoming. Plan around the available forwarding workflow when evaluating how requests will reach the quote desk.
Freitt works alongside your existing transport management system, spreadsheets, and email. Its role in this workflow is preparing the quote. During a pilot, confirm how your team will carry approved information into the systems used for the next stage of the shipment.
Freitt flags the gap and drafts a carrier inquiry. A person reviews and sends that inquiry, obtains the missing rate, and checks the resulting quote. Allow for that work when measuring savings: requests needing new information will still require human attention.
A person on your team reviews the draft and sends the customer reply from your own email. Configured approval rules can add another review for specified exceptions. Assign that responsibility clearly so the quote moves from prepared draft to an informed customer response.
Bring one recent RFQ and its matching rate sheet to a Freitt demonstration. Examine the extracted details, pricing source, and draft reply. Then test a representative batch with your team. You will have a practical basis for deciding whether an AI quote desk can return hours to your business.
Want to see this run on your own lanes? Bring one RFQ and the matching rate sheet to a 30-minute live quote session.
An AI rollout only works once your team trusts its output enough to send it to a customer. Here's how to bring AI into the freight quote desk with a clear review standard, a tight pilot, and measurement that shows what's actually changing.
Sep 30, 2026
See it live
Bring one rate request and the matching rate sheet. We’ll show you how Freitt reads it, prices it and drafts the reply.
30 minutes · no deck · your rates stay private
