You’re on the phone with a customer, trying to quote a shipment while balancing fluctuating rates, dozens of surcharges, and the ever-looming threat of a last-minute capacity crunch. Meanwhile, your inbox pings with another rate update. Stressful? Sure. Relatable? Absolutely.
Freight pricing today is like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube where the colors keep changing. Rates shift faster than airline schedules, influenced by everything from fuel prices to global crises. That’s why a single lane’s rates can vary by over 80% in a week, and an average of 43% of a sales exec’s time is spent on pricing and RFPs. The fact is, without real-time insights, you’re left flying blind.
Now, there’s a better way. Tools like WebCargo’s Average Dynamic Rates bring clarity to the chaos, letting forwarders access advanced data and AI capabilities to optimize their pricing strategies based on real-time market conditions.
Benchmarking: From Blindfolds to Binoculars
Benchmarking freight rates isn’t new. Forwarders have always wanted to know if their quotes are market-beating or bottom-of-the-barrel. Traditionally, this involved poring over dusty rate sheets or playing email ping-pong with carriers. You had to juggle your trusty BSAs, contract rates, and promotional tariffs, all updated with the urgency of snail mail. And while that might have worked back when Nokia phones were cutting-edge, this juggling act is painfully outdated today.
That’s where WebCargo’s Average Dynamic Rates come in. It’s benchmarking for the 21st century. Instead of relying on static, outdated data with a three month data-lag, WebCargo’s Average Dynamic Rates provide the average price of shipments from the last five days of eBooking transactions, excluding contract rates. These insights are pulled from the Freightos Air Index (FAX), ensuring you have up-to-date, market-driven benchmarks at your fingertips.
Dynamic Pricing: Smarter Pricing, Faster Freight
The freight industry is no stranger to change, but dynamic pricing is rewriting the rulebook. WebCargo’s Average Dynamic Rates take all that chaos and turn it into clarity, helping you save time, work faster, and quote smarter. Here’s how:
1. Time Savings: The Shortcut You Didn’t Know You Needed
No more endless clicking through tabs or sifting through outdated spreadsheets. The Average Dynamic Rate does the heavy lifting for you, consolidating all the relevant market data into one intuitive view.
2. Accuracy: Real Data, Real Results
The Average Dynamic Rate feature pulls data directly from recent eBooking transactions sourced from the Freightos Air Index (FAX). Insight into true dynamic yield and load actor optimization means your quotes are now based on what’s actually happening in the market, not last month’s rates or someone’s best guess.
3. Smarter Quotes: Get It Right the First Time
With clear benchmarks by weight break (e.g., 100-300kg, 300-500kg), you can create smarter quotes that align with real market trends. No overpricing that scares off customers or underpricing that eats into your margins – just accurate, competitive quotes tailored to the moment.
How It Works: Simplicity Meets Power
Here’s the magic: You enter your shipment details – origin, destination, weight, and dimensions – and the Average Dynamic Rate gives you a clear snapshot of average rates for similar shipments over the past five days. Unlike dynamic rates shown in the matrix, this feature is a static rate search that delivers a simple, consolidated view of recent trends, making it perfect for quick comparisons or planning.
The feature also excludes contract rates, because they often reflect long-term agreements rather than the dynamic, day-to-day trends this tool is designed to capture. By focusing solely on recent, real-world transactions, the Average Dynamic Rate ensures you’re always working with the freshest, most relevant data.
Average Dynamic Rates: Levelling the Playing Field
The Average Dynamic Rate is more than just a one-size-fits-all solution – it’s a tool tailored to meet the diverse needs of forward-thinking forwarders, including:
- Small-to-Medium Forwarders: Level the playing field by accessing the same powerful enterprise-grade data and insights as larger competitors, to compete on price and win more business.
- Large-Scale Operations: Streamline workflows and free up teams to focus on what matters: strategic initiatives like customer retention and market expansion.
- Strategic Thinkers: Use the tool to spot pricing trends, optimize margins, and build long-term customer relationships with transparent, competitive quotes based on actual market conditions.
By making benchmarking and quoting faster and easier than ever before, the Average Dynamic Rates help forwarders of all sizes unlock the unprecedented levels of agility, visibility, and profitability that drive a 12-15x ROI.
The Future of Freight Pricing Is Here
Freight pricing is evolving, and forwarders need to evolve with it. AI, predictive analytics, and machine learning are already reshaping how rates are calculated and communicated. In fact, a survey conducted by Freightos in 2023 with shippers, forwarders and carriers, showed an overwhelming 98% of respondents already leveraging such tech solutions, with over 60% utilizing them to better inform their operational decisions.
And WebCargo’s Average Dynamic Rates is a crucial next step into this era. Forwarders can now cut the guesswork and harness the power of real-time data for profit and revenue optimization across flexible pricing scenarios, for the ultimate in up-to-date pricing.
