You didn’t lose the lane. You won it—and bled margin.
In drayage, that’s how it happens. Not with one big error, but with dozens of quiet ones.
Most quoting teams aren’t pricing incorrectly. They’re pricing without visibility. What looks like a working process—copying a similar quote, adjusting fuel, sending the rate—only works until it doesn’t.
And by the time anyone catches the miss, the shipment’s already moved.
That’s why we built the Margin Defense Sheet—a simple tool that shows you, in real time, whether a quote will actually hold up. No rebuild. No pitch. Just clarity.
The Quiet Ways Margin Slips
Talk to any carrier doing 50 to 100 quotes a day and you’ll hear the same story. The issue isn’t logic. It’s structure.
Some teams track fuel in a tab. Others store accessorials in a shared drive. Margin gets calculated after the fact—if at all.
“We don’t know if we’re making money on a quote until it’s too late.” —C-level executive, Southeast-based multi-terminal carrier
These aren't dramatic failures. They’re routine ones.
A port fee left out.
A chassis rule forgotten.
A customer override missed because someone was in a rush.
They don’t show up in dashboards. But they do show up on the P&L.
Try the Margin Defense Sheet (Free)
We built this template for the ops leads who are still quoting from Excel—and still trying to do it right.
It’s designed to bring order to the chaos, without slowing your team down.
Inside the sheet, you’ll find:
A live margin calculator that updates per quote
Conditional formatting to flag breakeven or under-water lanes
A reference tab for fuel, accessorials, and port-specific fees
Optional customer override logic
One-click visibility into every quote’s profitability
It’s everything we recommend to teams on day one—now available to you, no login required.
There’s nothing wrong with quoting in Excel. Some of the best-run teams we work with still do.
But what sets them apart is consistency. They don’t leave margin up to memory or guesswork. They bring structure to every quote—before it goes out the door.
This sheet gives you a way to do that. Quietly. Reliably. Without changing how your team works.
When It’s Time to Scale
Spreadsheets can get you a long way. But they weren’t built for volume.
When your team is quoting 50, 100, or 200 lanes in a week, the problem isn’t pricing logic—it’s execution speed.
That’s where automation steps in. Not to replace your logic, but to make it run live.
With Dray Insight, you keep your structure and your rules. We just make them move faster:
Customer-specific overrides apply automatically
Margin is visible before the quote is sent
Reps type in two locations and get a price—built from your logic, not ours
“Dray Insight didn’t change how we price. It made our logic run—faster than we ever could manually.” —Director of Sales, Norfolk-based carrier
✅ Want to See Your Logic Run Live?
Bring your spreadsheet. We’ll plug it in and show it working. No setup. No sales pitch. Just proof. 👉 Book a Quote Clarity Call →
💬 Got a Quote Breakdown Story?
We’re collecting RFQ horror stories and quoting slip-ups for a teardown feature. 📩 Email towns@drayinsight.com to share yours—anonymized, of course.
