A repricing market means a requoting desk

If you run a freight desk, you can feel the market moving again, and you can feel it in your inbox.

The data says what your gut already knows. Contract van rates just posted a record one-month jump, up 13 cents to $2.39 a mile, with reefer up 9 cents to $2.62. Spot rates are running 70 to 85 cents a mile above last year across van, reefer, and flatbed, even though volumes have actually cooled. Tight capacity and climbing rates mean one thing for the desk: shippers re-bid, brokers requote, and the pricing requests pile up.

I've sat at that desk in exactly this kind of market. Here's what I learned the hard way.

The quote you turn around fast is the one you win. In a repricing market, the number that lands first, backed by real lane history, usually takes the freight. The one that sits until tomorrow is already lost.

The grind isn't the pricing, it's everything around it. Pulling the lane history, checking the cost, formatting the response, and chasing the follow-up is what actually eats the hours, not the judgment call on the rate.

Follow-up is where the money leaks. A quote sent and never chased is a coin flip. The desks that win are the ones that circle back, and that's the first thing to slip when the phone won't stop.

At Silk Road we put an AI teammate on that grind: it preps the RFP response, pulls the history, and tracks every follow-up, so the pricing throughput goes up without another seat at the desk. You still set the number. You just stop losing quotes to the clock.

So heading into bid season, here's my real question for you: how many quotes is your desk actually turning around in a week, and how many are you leaving on the table because there aren't enough hours to chase them?

Dallas Wymes, Silk Road SCM

Freight, Trucking, Freight Brokers, Pricing, Logistics

Originally published in The Dispatch on LinkedIn.