In short: Where the minutes go in a small forwarder's quoting, a one-minute triage rule, what to template, what to automate, and when a draft beats a template.
In a small forwarder, quoting is the job nobody owns and everybody does. The ops manager prices a 40HC between two bookings. The director answers an LCL enquiry from the car. A request that lands at 4.30pm waits until tomorrow. Meanwhile the customer has sent the same email to two other forwarders, and the first clear reply sets the number everyone else gets compared against.
Hiring doesn't fix this. A quoting clerk costs more than most small forwarders' quoting is worth, and the work is lumpy: nothing for an hour, then six requests before lunch. What works is taking the minutes out of each quote, so the people you already have can turn it around the same morning.
Time five real requests this week, from opening the email to pressing send. For a standard FCL or LCL request the pricing is a small part of it. The rest is reading. Customers write "a container from Ningbo" and mean a 40HC, FOB, delivered to a warehouse they haven't named. You work out what's being asked, then go and find the rate: ocean freight in one spreadsheet, local charges in another, cartage zones in a PDF from the transport company, the clearance fee in your head. You notice what's missing and decide whether to quote anyway or ask first. Then you type it up so it reads properly, with lines, a total, validity and exclusions, and you check it, because a wrong number costs more than a slow one.
Most of those minutes are reading, arithmetic and formatting. A few are judgement. The aim is to keep the few and get rid of the rest.
Open every request and put it in one of three buckets before you do anything else.
Standard lane, complete details. You have a rate for the route, you know the container or the dimensions, you know the Incoterm and the delivery postcode. Quote it now, while it's open. Don't put it in a pile.
Standard lane, details missing. Send the questions now, all of them in one numbered email, and quote when the answers come back. Never ask one question, wait a day, then ask another. There's a short list of the six questions that cover most gaps.
Not standard. Project cargo, dangerous goods, out-of-gauge, a lane you don't have a rate for, a customer asking for credit. Reply within the hour anyway, say when they'll have a price, then go and get it.
The rule underneath all three: something goes back to the customer the same hour, even if it's a question. An importer who gets an acknowledgement and two sensible questions at 9.40am assumes you're competent. One who hears nothing until tomorrow assumes you're busy with bigger clients.
Template the structure, not the numbers. Save four texts in your email client and use them every time.
The quote reply itself: a one-line summary of what you're quoting, the line items, the total, validity, exclusions, next step. Same order every time, so a repeat customer can read it in ten seconds and your own staff can check it in twenty.
The missing-information email, with the questions numbered and a default stated: "If I don't hear back I'll quote FOB, port to door."
The holding reply for non-standard requests, with a blank for the time you'll have a price.
The exclusions paragraph. Duty, GST, storage, detention, inspection, waiting time. Write it once, properly, and stop retyping it in slightly different words.
What not to template: the price. A templated price is a published tariff, and the moment it's out of date you're honouring a number you didn't mean.
The first bucket is the one to automate, because it's the biggest and the most mechanical. A standard quote is a lookup: ocean freight by port pair and container size, local charges per container, door delivery by postcode zone, a clearance fee. If those rates live in a spreadsheet, software can find them. The hard part was never the lookup; it was reading the email well enough to know which row to look up.
That part is now solvable. Software can read "1 x 40HC FOB Ningbo to Melbourne, door delivery to Dandenong South 3175, customs clearance too" and pull the right four rows from your sheet. It can also tell when a request belongs in the second bucket, and write the questions instead.
What you shouldn't automate: deciding to go below your floor to win a lane, choosing which carrier to book, extending credit, anything with dangerous goods or oversize cargo. Those are the minutes of judgement. Keep them.
A template still needs a person to fill in eight fields and chase four rates, which is why a templated quote still takes a quarter of an hour. A draft is different: the fields are already read from the customer's email, the numbers are already pulled from your rate sheet, and the exclusions and validity are already in. The job changes from writing to checking, and checking a quote against the email it came from takes about two minutes.
This is what Laneworks does. You forward the customer's email to your Laneworks address. About two minutes later a draft lands back in your inbox with three parts: the reply to paste and send, a list of what it read from the email so you can check it fast, and a price breakdown that shows the rate-sheet row behind every line. If the request is missing something, the draft is the question email instead, with the questions numbered. Nothing goes to the customer unless you send it, from your own mailbox. There's a full example of a draft on the site.
It doesn't replace the person who quotes. It removes the minutes they spend before they get to the part only they can do.
Forward one quote request from your inbox to try@getlaneworks.com. A drafted reply comes back, priced from a sample tariff, so you can see the format and how it reads the email. Send your own rate sheet and every line comes from your rates.
Forward a quote request