Freight Quotes Overview
Once you have a finished load plan, Freight Quotes lets you ask freight forwarders what they would charge to ship it — and compare their answers in one place. The whole exchange happens from your own email account, so forwarders reply to you directly and nothing leaves your inbox without you sending it.
The Workflow
Freight Quotes is a four-step loop:
- Maintain a directory of forwarders — save the freight forwarders you work with (company, contact, email) once, and reuse them on every quote.
- Send a quote request — from a solved plan, pick one or more forwarders and email them a quote request. LOP attaches a PDF of the load plan and sends each email from your connected Outlook account, individually.
- Record what they quote back — forwarders reply to your inbox. You read each reply and type the price, transit time, and notes into LOP by hand.
- Compare and decide — when two or more forwarders have responded to the same request, view their offers side by side, with the fastest and cheapest highlighted.
Response entry is manual. LOP never reads your mailbox — it only sends the quote request emails. When a forwarder replies, you copy the figures from their email into LOP yourself. This keeps your inbox private and means any reply format works.
What You Need First
Before you can send a quote request, two things must be in place:
- A solved load plan — the plan you want quoted must have items placed in containers. The Get Quote button only appears once a plan has a packed result.
- A connected Outlook account — quote emails are sent from your own Microsoft/Outlook mailbox, so you connect it once under Settings → Security. See Connecting Outlook for the one-time setup.
If you open Get Quote before connecting Outlook, LOP will prompt you to connect it first.
The Pages in This Section
- Managing Forwarders — build and maintain your forwarder directory
- Getting a Quote — send a load plan to forwarders for pricing
- Past Offers — review the quote requests you've sent
- Recording & Comparing Responses — enter what each forwarder quoted and compare them
Freight Quotes is most useful when you send the same plan to several forwarders at once — that's when the side-by-side comparison pays off. Add a few forwarders to your directory first, then send one request to all of them.