There are many factors in determining a freight shipping price. Here are the right questions to ask to get a good deal

We’re here to help you figure out the right questions to ask when you’re looking for a freight shipping quote. A common question we get asked is how much it costs to ship a certain weight from A to B. Another one is how much it costs to ship a specific commodity such as a hairdresser or car engine from one city to another.

These are the questions that can get you, for the lack of a better word, ripped off, for several reasons:

Pricing types in freight shipping

The reason you can be taken advantage of if you only ask how much it costs to ship a certain weight is due to pricing types in freight shipping. 

There are two common types of quote types in freight. One is based on standard pricing and the other is based on dynamic pricing. 

Standard pricing, although it fluctuates, is fairly steady. Standard pricing means that a carrier has a lane (or usually many lanes) that they service regularly. That means that they can keep their pricing fairly steady and adjust specific rates based on the details of specific shipments. 

These standard rates used to be valid for up to 30 days at which point they had to be changed due to fluctuations in fuel prices. These days, it’s more common for quotes to be valid for up to 7 days for the same reasons.

Dynamic pricing, on the other hand, fluctuates heavily based on demand which allows carriers to control demand by raising or lowering prices. 

That means that you can get an excellent price one day (that is usually valid for up to 3 days) and three days later you could get an astronomical quote due to a rise in demand and fuel prices.