Anyone who buys transport services faces the same question again and again: do I tender this shipment individually, or does it belong in a tender? The answer has a direct impact on your freight costs, your workload and how reliably your forwarders deliver. In this article, you will learn how the two forms differ, which criteria to use when deciding, and how to combine spot and tender so that they complement each other.
The two forms of freight tendering at a glance
A freight RFQ is first of all nothing more than a structured request for quotation: you describe your transport requirements, invite forwarders and compare the quotes. The main difference lies in the period for which you buy.
Spot tendering concerns a single shipment that is due at short notice. Forwarders quote a price for exactly this job, at the current market price. Read more in the glossary under spot tendering.
A freight tender awards an entire transport volume for a longer period, usually one year. You define lanes, volumes and tiers, and forwarders bid fixed prices for the entire period. Read more in the glossary under freight tender.
When does spot tendering pay off?
Spot tendering is the tool for everything that cannot be planned. Typical cases are:
- One-off shipments, such as a machine delivery, a project business or a trade fair.
- New lanes for which there is no agreed price yet.
- Volume peaks, when more comes up than your contract partners can cover.
- Cancellations, when a booked forwarder cannot run the shipment at short notice.
The advantage: you get the current market price and are not tied to anyone. The disadvantage: prices fluctuate with the market, and every tender takes time if it runs by email and phone. This is exactly where it is decided whether spot tendering is efficient. If you request every shipment individually by email, you spend hours collecting quotes in different formats.
When does a freight tender pay off?
A freight tender plays to its strengths with regular, plannable shipments. It pays off if you:
- have recurring lanes that you serve week after week,
- need planning certainty for prices and capacity,
- want to bundle your volume and negotiate better terms as a result,
- want to reduce effort, because not every shipment has to be requested again.
The price of this certainty is the effort up front. A tender with many lanes and weight tiers quickly comprises thousands of individual prices. If the quotes come in different spreadsheets, merging and checking them alone takes weeks. On top of that comes the risk of errors: a mistyped price is easy to miss in a large spreadsheet and only becomes expensive once the shipment has been run.
The decision in four questions
Whether a shipment belongs in a tender or in spot tendering can usually be settled with four questions:
- How often does the shipment occur? Regular and predictable points to a tender, one-off or irregular to spot.
- How well do you know the volume? Only if you can give forwarders a realistic quantity will you get reliable prices in a tender.
- How important is planning certainty to you? Fixed prices protect against fluctuations, but also tie you in when the market gets cheaper.
- How much effort can you invest? A tender needs preparation, but saves time during the year.
In short
| Spot tendering | Freight tender | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | a single shipment | volume across many lanes |
| Period | short-term | usually one year |
| Price | current market price | fixed price for the period |
| Effort | low per shipment, but for every shipment | high up front, then low |
| Suited for | one-off, unplanned requirements | regular, plannable shipments |
Why most shippers need both
In practice, the question is rarely "either or". Hardly any company can plan its transport volume completely. A sensible setup looks like this: the tender covers the regular lanes, spot tendering covers the rest. The results of your spot tenders also help you with the next tender. If you see that a lane is run on the spot market again and again, it probably belongs in the next tender.
What matters is that both follow the same rules:
- A fixed bid structure, so that all quotes are directly comparable.
- Invited forwarders only, so that your volumes and lanes remain confidential.
- A comparison that considers quality as well as price, because the cheapest quote is not always the best.
- Complete documentation, so that you can trace every award later.
Common mistakes to avoid
Accepting different formats. If every forwarder structures its quote differently, you end up adding fuel, tolls and ancillary charges by hand. That costs time and leads to errors. Specify the structure.
Looking only at the price. A forwarder that is cheap but unreliable ends up expensive. Decide in advance which criteria count besides price.
Making the tender too big. Lanes that are served only rarely hardly bring better prices in a tender, but make it hard to manage. Such shipments are often better placed in spot tendering.
Revealing your volumes. On open platforms, the market sees what you ship. Make sure that only the forwarders you invite yourself can see your tender.
Checklist for your next tender
- Is it clear whether this is about a single shipment or a volume?
- Are origin, destination, time window and requirements fully described?
- Have you specified a fixed bid structure?
- Do you know which criteria besides price you will use to decide?
- Do only the invited forwarders see your tender?
- Is the award documented at the end?
Spot and tender in one system
With eFrexx, you run spot tenders and freight tenders in one system, for road, rail, sea and air freight. You define the bid structure, eFrexx instantly shows all quotes side by side and, in tenders, checks every entry for plausibility. Only invited forwarders see your tender, and bidders cannot see each other. The freight cost calculator shows how much you could save.