Offers automate the response and assignment of a carrier in Turvo for a broker by reducing the steps, clicks, applications, and data entry necessary to engage a carrier. Below are basic steps to send an offer to a carrier from Turvo. There is no longer a need to spend time copying information from a shipment into an email.
We also have a video on this topic: Making an offer in three clicks.
Sending an offer to a carrier is available in the Carriers tab of a shipment that needs cover. Existing offers can be viewed in the shipment's Carriers tab, or by navigating to Offers from the left navigation bar.
Note: Offers functionality is currently only available for truckload (TL) and drayage shipments.
Step 1: Navigate to a shipment in the Plan phase.
Navigate to a shipment in the Plan phase that is either in the tendered status, or needs carrier assignment.
Protip: Click Needs cover from the dashboard to quickly see all of your shipments in the Plan phase that need a carrier. Depending on how your tenant has been customized, it's possible that you do not have Needs cover on your dashboard.
Step 2: Select a shipment that needs to be covered
Select a shipment that needs to be covered to view more details. If you are in list view, click on the name of a customer. If in card view, click anywhere on a shipment’s card.
Protip: In list view, you can click See available carriers on the far right side to go directly to the Carrier tab of that shipment.
Step 3: Click the Carriers tab
Then click on the Carriers tab to create a new offer.
Carriers may be listed based on which carriers are nearby, available, contracted, or past used, for example.
Protip: Click on All sources to see the drop down of all the options Turvo supports. From here you can pick and choose where your list of carriers is coming from.
Step 4: Add an offer
If there is a carrier listed that you want to email an offer to, hover over the carrier’s row and click OFFER.
Otherwise, click on + Add Offer at the bottom of the carrier list to send an offer to a carrier that is not listed.
Step 5: Complete the Add carrier offer details
Fill in the details on the Add carrier offer modal that pops up.
- Carrier: If you selected a carrier from the list, their name will be populated here. If you created a new offer, start typing the carrier's name, or a carrier group name, and select them from the drop-down.
Protip: If you select a carrier group, the individual carriers that are a part of the group will populate.
Note: If you are utilizing Turvo’s automatic carrier rate application feature, contracted and global rates will be displayed beneath the carrier information, if that carrier has a rate that matches the shipment. See How to assign a contracted carrier rate to a shipment, to learn more about utilizing automated carrier rating settings. - Cost breakdown: Check this box if you want to include an itemized cost breakdown with the offer. Then fill in the item, quantity, and price. Click the +Add Item button to add as many items to the cost breakdown as you need.
- Carrier email: Type in the email address of the person to whom to offer should be sent. If there is a main email or "Offer" email added to a carrier's profile already, then this will pre-populate. Learn how to add an Offer email to a carrier profile here.
Note: You can enter more than one email address. For example, if the carrier has multiple dispatchers who need to receive the offer simultaneously. - Request: Enter the requested price, if applicable. If no requested price is entered, the carrier must respond with a quoted offer to proceed.
- Expires in: This is how long (in hours) the offer will be active until expiration.
Note: You can set hours of dispatch in Admin console to control times when you do not want offers to expire. For example, if your offer is set to expire in one hour, and your hours are set from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, offers sent after 5:00 PM won’t expire until one hour into the next operational day. See the Understanding and updating tenant settings article in the Help Center for more information. - Rate insider card: If your tenant is configured to display SONAR information using the Rate insider card, that information will appear here. Use the displayed lane rate data, if available, to help determine your offer amount based on historical and current market lane rates. See our article on Turvo's Rate insider card [Limited Release] to learn more about enabling and utilizing this feature.
- Comments: Add comments to the tender before sending, if needed.
- This offer is non-negotiable : Check this checkbox if you do not wish to allow the carrier to submit a counter offer. They will only be able to accept or reject the offer outright.
Note: Admin-level users can set this toggle to be enabled by default. See the Configuring business rules for shipments article in the Help Center for more information.
Protip: You can send an offer to a carrier with an Inactive status. In this case, the offer workflow operates normally; the carrier can accept, reject, or counter the offer. However, the shipment does not move past the Tendered status until the carrier has been activated.
From the Offers screen, click the ACTIVATE CARRIER button to activate the carrier and move the shipment forward.
Final Step: Send the offer
Once all required information is filled out, the OFFER button will change from grey to blue. Click OFFER and the offer will be sent. The offer will remain in Pending status until the carrier responds.
You can also quickly see which offers have shipments attached to them by location the box icon at the top right corner of a offer card:
Hovering over the box icon will display the shipment number and clicking the icon will bring you directly to the Summary tab of the shipment.
Similarly, any shipments that have pending offers against them will have an offer icon at the top right corner of the shipment card. Hovering over the offer icon will show how many pending offers the shipment has and clicking the icon will bring you directly to the Carriers tab of the shipment to view all pending offers.
Protip: Shipments with multiple icons may show an i icon at the top right corner of the shipment card. The i is a consolidated list of the other icons available for that shipment. Clicking the i will display a drop-down list of the available options.
Additional information beyond the fields in the Add carrier offer modal are included in the email based on details previously added to the shipment. The offer email that your carrier receives includes:
- Origin (city, state)
- Pickup date
- Destination (city, state)
- Delivery date
- From (customer)
- Distance & distance units (total miles only shown if shipment with locations is available)
Once the carrier clicks RESPOND TO OFFER from the email, a public link launches, no login required. The public link includes even more information when applicable:
- Requested rate (if any)
- Route overview map
- Cost breakdown (if shared by the broker)
- Items and quantity
- Equipment required (including description and temperature range)
- Items
- Gross weight
- Net weight
- Sum of all item Pallet quantity, weight, and secondary SKU
- Route special instructions
- Services
- Comments
Editing an offer in Pending status
While the offer is in “Pending” status, you may make updates to the offer before the carrier responds.
Hover over a pending offer and click EDIT.
You may update the requested price or expiration. Additionally, you may include comments to provide context on the updated offer.
If you make changes to offer information on an offer that is already sent and in Pending status,
The offer is automatically updated with the recent changes.
The changes will be updated on the offer guest page and in the broker and carrier offer details.
A new email with updated information will be sent to the carrier if they were originally notified by email.
Price recalculations
If changes are made to the offer, a new price is automatically recalculated based on the updates to the shipment.
For example,
- If contracted rates are used for the offer, and the items and stops are added or updated, the price will automatically update to reflect this.
- If the contracted rate is calculated per pallet, per unit, or per hundredweight, the new price is calculated based on the updated item information.
- If a per-mile contracted rate is used and there is a change in the pickup or delivery stops, the new rate is recalculated based on the new offer price.
- If new service is added or existing services are removed, the new rate is recalculate based on the new offer price
- There will not be any price updates for flat rate contracted prices.
If the routing guide is executing on the shipment and the shipment is updated and does not match the routing guide, then the execution of that existing routing guide is stopped and the reason that the routing guide dropped off is listed on the shipment timeline. The system also searches for and executes a new applicable routing guide.
Notifications: If carrier has a tenant, the changes in the offer and details are included in the the offer timeline
Withdrawing an offer
While the offer is in “Pending” status, you may withdraw the offer before the carrier responds.
Hover over a pending offer and click WITHDRAW.
You may provide a reason for withdrawing in addition to any comments. The carrier will no longer be able to respond after an offer is withdrawn.
Note: If the carrier has their own Turvo tenant, they will be able to see the withdrawal reason and comment.
If the offer in the new shipment requirement does not match the carrier’s contract used to send the offer, the offer is withdrawn and the offer withdrawal reason is Shipment is no longer available. This does not apply to non-contracted rate offers (spot offers).
Automatic withdrawal of offers if the contract does not match
For shippers and 3PLs that do not want to have the offer withdraw automatically because of mutual agreements with their carriers, or if they want to withdraw offers based on specific criteria, use the contract mismatch rule to withdraw the offer. This offer is enabled in Admin console > Rules > Shipment > Configuration > Carrier offer > Withdraw offers if the contract doesn’t match.
If this rule is enabled, offers are automatically withdrawn for the condition and criteria.
Carrier actions
The carrier accepts
- The carrier who accepted is added to the shipment
- All pending or open offers to other carriers are withdrawn
- Shipment moves to Covered status
- Offer moves to Accepted status
- Shipment will be shared with the carrier’s tenant if they have a connected tenant
- They will receive a confirmation email with rate confirmation attached. This will display the exact pickup and delivery address. The rate confirmation will be visible in the Documents tab of the shipment.
- Upon clicking ACCEPT, the carrier will optionally be able to enter additional details, or skip this step and enter later:
- If the carrier does add additional information when accepting the offer, this will populate in the IDs block in the carrier section of the shipment. The Type of equipment will show under the Route block within the Carrier section. This can be edited by the carrier up until the shipment is marked picked up.
Once a carrier accepts an offer, the shipment will have an offer icon showing that it has 1 accepted offer. Like with pending offers, clicking the offer icon will bring you to the Carriers tab of the shipment to show any accepted and made offers against that shipment.
Note: The carrier must enter valid insurance information before accepting offers. If a carrier has not entered their insurance information into Turvo, an exception is automatically created. In this case, the shipment status does not move to Covered.
If, after accepting the offer, the carrier then removes themselves from the shipment, the status of the shipment automatically reverts to Tendered. You also receive a notification.
The carrier rejects the offer
- Offer moves to Rejected status
- The carrier has the option to provide a reason for rejecting the tender. The available reasons are:
- Rate was too low
- Deadhead too long
- Asset is no longer available
- Other reason
It’s important to note that once a tender has been responded to, the response cannot be changed. For example, if a carrier accepts and then they end up not being able to cover the shipment, then they need to contact the broker or shipper to tell them. The broker or shipper then needs to manually remove the carrier from the shipment to reflect the change. Another example is if the carrier rejects, but can actually do it, then they need to reach out to the broker or shipper so they can send them a new tender to accept. Similarly, if a tender expires, a carrier can no longer accept or reject the tender.
The carrier counters your rate or responds with a quote
In addition to accepting or rejecting an offer, a carrier can counter your requested rate, or reply with a quote if you didn't specify a price on the offer.
If this happens:
- Offer moves to Open status and will have an expiration time
- You will be able to Accept, Reject, or Counter the quote
In order to stay on top of Open offers, we recommend saving a filter to view your Open offers under the Offers section in the left navigation bar:
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