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Contract rate
A contract rate is a price a broker and a shipper agree to hold for a lane over a period, instead of pricing each load from scratch.
Last updated 11 October 2026.
The shipper sends a file of lanes, often as an RFP, and wants a rate that will stand for the term they name. Your answer on each lane is the price, the equipment, and the service you will commit. That is how a book gets built. It is also how a desk gets stuck if the price ignored what the lane costs to cover.
Use your history. Loads you have already run, what you paid carriers, how often the truck was late, and where you had to go to the spot market because the contracted truck did not show. A rate that is only a market average looks tidy in the bid file and hurts for the length of the term.
Awarded rates still become loads. Each tender has to match what you committed: the lane, the rate, and the rules you accepted. A tender that does not match is not a routine build. It is a question for a person before the load sits in the TMS as if you agreed.
FreightScout prices the bid from your cost and service history and returns it in the customer's template. On a live tender it checks the tender against what you committed. How FreightScout answers a freight RFP.
Questions people actually ask
What belongs in a contract bid besides a price?
The equipment and the service you will actually commit, priced from loads you have run. A lane you have never run should be marked, not filled in with a guess.
What if an awarded tender does not match the contract rate?
Do not build it as if you agreed. FreightScout checks the tender against what you committed, and a mismatch waits for a person.