How Fast Should a Freight Forwarder Answer an RFQ?

Freight quote response time decides more bookings than the rate does, and most forwarders have no idea what their own number is. That is the whole problem in one sentence.

The instinct is to argue about price. The uncomfortable possibility is that a meaningful share of lost enquiries were never a price decision at all. Somebody else answered first, the shipper had a workable option, and your quote arrived into a decision that had already been made.

The number you need before anything else

Take last month. Count the enquiries that came in. Count how many received a quote. Then measure the hours between arrival and first substantive response, not the acknowledgement.

Most forwarders who do this exercise for the first time find three things. The average is worse than they assumed. The spread is enormous, with some enquiries answered in an hour and others in four days. And a number of enquiries were never answered at all, usually the ones that arrived while somebody was travelling.

The spread matters more than the average. An average of eight hours made up of one hour and twenty hours is not an eight hour service.

What a reasonable target looks like

There is no universal industry standard to quote here, and anyone who gives you one without naming a source is guessing. What holds up in practice is relative: the target is faster than the forwarders the shipper asked alongside you.

A workable internal rule, adjusted to your own mix:

• Air: substantive answer the same working day
• LCL and FCL spot: within one working day
• Tender and contract: acknowledge within a day, full submission to the stated deadline

The acknowledgement is not the answer, but it is not worthless either. A shipper who knows a quote is coming by tomorrow morning will usually wait for it.

The four reasons quotes are slow

The enquiry landed in one person's inbox

And that person is on a plane. This is the single most common cause and the easiest to fix, because it is a routing problem rather than a capacity problem.

Nobody owns it

An enquiry with no named owner is everybody's second priority.

It needs a rate that needs an agent

Legitimate, and the reason to send an interim reply rather than silence. Silence while you wait for an agent looks identical to not caring.

It arrived on a channel nobody watches

WhatsApp, a website form, a network portal. Enquiries that come in outside the main inbox routinely sit for days.

What to fix first

Routing, then ownership, then measurement. Get every enquiry into one place with a name attached and a clock running, and the response time usually improves before you have changed anything else. The remaining delay is then a real capacity question worth discussing.

As an example configuration, RYNR captures enquiries from email, forms and messaging into one queue, assigns an owner and starts the clock, which is what makes the number measurable in the first place. See the features page.

Once the quote is out, the next question is the follow-up rhythm, which differs by mode. That is covered in our quote follow-up sequence for air, LCL and FCL, and the wording itself in our seven RFQ follow-up templates.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good freight quote response time?

Faster than the forwarders quoting alongside you. As a working internal rule: same working day for air, within one working day for LCL and FCL spot enquiries.

Does an acknowledgement count as a response?

Not as the answer, but it holds the enquiry. A shipper who knows a quote is coming tomorrow will usually wait.

How do I measure response time if everything is in email?

Manually for one month, as a baseline. It is tedious and it is the most useful hour you will spend, because it converts an opinion into a number.

What if we are slow because we depend on agent rates?

Send an interim reply with the expected timing. The damage comes from silence rather than from the wait itself.

To see the enquiry clock running on your own lanes, book a demo.