What is a rate card, and why yours is three files
A rate card is the price list you agreed with a carrier. What is in it, why it is so hard to use, and a ten-minute test for your own.
A rate card is the price list you agreed with a carrier, the company that moves your goods. It says: for this kind of shipment, from here to there, you pay this much. Every freight bill should match it. Most companies cannot check that, because the rate card is not one thing. It is three files and a few emails.
What is in a rate card
For a truck carrier, a typical rate card has:
- A price table. Each row is a weight range: 0 to 30 kg, 31 to 100 kg, and so on. Each column is an area or a country. The box where they meet is the price.
- Speed. Next-day delivery costs more than three-day delivery. Each speed has its own table, or an extra percentage on top.
- Extra charges. Fuel (a percentage that changes every month), road tolls, busy season, dangerous goods, a truck lift, waiting time, delivery to a home address. Each one has a rule for when it applies.
- Dates. From when to when the prices are valid. Prices go up once a year, sometimes more often.
- Minimums and rounding. A lowest possible charge per shipment. Weights rounded up to the next kilogram, or the next ten.
Parcel carriers add more: rules for big but light parcels, lists of far-away areas, fees for returns. Ships and planes have their own rules and their own units.
Why it is so hard to use
The contract is a PDF. The buying team typed the price table into Excel to compare offers. The fuel charge comes by email every month. A change to one route was agreed on the phone and confirmed in a two-line email in April.
So when someone asks “what should this shipment have cost?”, the true answer is: give me twenty minutes, and I am still not sure.
That is why bills get paid without a check. People do care. The check is just too much work for each bill.
What “one clean list” looks like
To check bills automatically, all of that has to become one table that a computer can read. Something like this:
| Carrier | Service | From zone | To zone | Weight from | Weight to | Price | Valid from | Valid to |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carrier A | 48h | DE-2 | FR-3 | 0 kg | 30 kg | 21.40 | 2026-01-01 | 2026-12-31 |
| Carrier A | 48h | DE-2 | FR-3 | 31 kg | 100 kg | 34.90 | 2026-01-01 | 2026-12-31 |
And a second table for the extra charges, with the rule for each one. Once you have this, a computer can answer “what should this have cost?” in a fraction of a second. For every shipment, every day.
Building these tables from the PDFs and emails is the first thing we do in a Process Scan of your freight costs. It is boring work. It is also where most of the money is.
A ten-minute test
Take one recent shipment. Ask the person in your company who knows freight best: “What should this have cost?” Start a timer.
If the answer takes under two minutes, your rate cards are in good shape. If it takes ten minutes and three files, you are like most companies. If the answer is “let me ask the carrier”, then the carrier is the only one who knows what you should pay them. That is not a good place to be.