Freight RFQ Metrics: From Enquiry to Booked Contribution

Key takeaways

Where to look first

Pick the question you need answered and go to the part of the page that answers it.

Stage definitions, from enquiry to contribution

Each stage is a status on one enquiry record, and each stage after the unique RFQ is a subset of the one before it. A record moves forward only when its own evidence exists: a price sent, an order confirmed, a delivery made.

Formulas and unavailable rules

Every RFQ count covers unique RFQs from one monthly cohort at a stated cutoff date, and every rate is printed with the two counts behind it. A metric whose denominator is zero or missing is reported as unavailable, never as zero.

Unique RFQs, duplicates and multiple quotes

A unique RFQ is one shipper's request for a price on one transport need. The earliest record of it stays, keeps its acquisition source and enters the counts; every repeat is kept with duplicate_of pointing at the earliest record.

Quotes are not counted as RFQs. A request that receives three revisions is one quoted RFQ with a quote_count of three, so a desk that quotes more often does not inflate any rate.

The seven day window in the table below is our proposed rule. Change it if your lanes need another, and state the window you use.

Tender invitations and carrier and driver applications

A tender invitation asks you to bid in a shipper's procurement round. Record it as one RFQ, and after an award keep its booking status pending until the first order for a shipment arrives; the award date is not the booking date.

An EDI load tender is different. In X12's transaction sets, the 204 message lets a shipper offer a specific shipment to a truckload carrier and the 990 message responds to it, so an accepted load tender is a booking.

Carrier applications and driver applications stay in the record so that they can be counted, but they never enter an RFQ count. Report them beside the RFQ figures, by source, because a broker's marketing often recruits carriers as well as finding shippers.

Cohorts, cutoffs and the lag to booking

A cohort is every enquiry created in one calendar month. Each stage is counted for that cohort whenever the later event happened, up to a measurement cutoff date printed beside the rate.

Bookings arrive days or weeks after the enquiry, so a young cohort shows a low booking rate that rises later. Set the booking cutoff from your own history, at the day by which nine in ten past bookings had arrived; until you have that history, read each cohort at 30, 60 and 90 days after the month ends.

A period rate is a different measure. GoFreight's forwarder KPI framework divides shipments booked in a period by quotes issued in the same period; that suits a desk watching throughput, but it mixes cohorts, so it moves when volume changes as well as when conversion does.

Ad platforms count inside their own windows. Google Ads records a conversion after an ad click only within the conversion action's window, 30 days by default and settable from 1 to 90 days depending on the conversion source, and Google Analytics uses a 90 day default lookback for key events other than first visits and first opens.

The template does not depend on those windows. It credits the source recorded when the enquiry arrived, so a booking on day 70 still counts for the cohort and source that produced it.

Media cost and fully loaded cost

Cost per qualified RFQ is reported twice, and the two figures are never added together or swapped. Both use the same source and cohort month, and both set a month's cost against the enquiries created in that month.

Media cost metrics apply to paid sources only; for organic search, referrals or email to your own list they are not applicable, and fully loaded cost is the figure to use. A source with cost and no qualified RFQs returns unavailable, shown with its cost and its zero count.

When agencies propose a paid channel, ask each for both figures on these definitions. Our comparison of Google Ads agencies for logistics sets out what each agency says it offers.

Realised contribution and its money convention

Realised contribution is invoiced sell revenue minus carrier buy cost minus attributable variable cost, for the shipments in the value basis you state. It counts only invoiced shipments at the cutoff, so a booking not yet delivered and invoiced adds nothing yet.

All amounts exclude VAT and are entered in one reporting currency, with its ISO 4217 code in the currency field. Convert other invoice currencies at the ECB euro reference rate for the invoice date; the ECB publishes these rates for information purposes only and strongly discourages their use for transactions, which suits reporting rather than settling invoices.

Disbursements stay out of revenue and cost: duties, import VAT and fees you pay in the customer's name and recharge at cost. The EU VAT Directive keeps such repayments out of the taxable amount (Article 79(c)), and they are not payment for your service.

Attributable variable cost is what those shipments caused and you did not recharge: payment or factoring fees, cargo insurance bought for the load, per load freight exchange fees, claims paid, and bank and currency charges. Salaries, rent, software and marketing stay out, and marketing is measured on the cost side.

Choose one value basis per file and print it beside every contribution figure. The figure is a management measure, the same whether your accounts present freight revenue gross or net.

The data dictionary

The template holds one row per enquiry in 33 fields, and none of them asks for a name, email address, phone number or street address. GDPR lists a name, an identification number, location data and an online identifier among the identifiers that can make a person identifiable (Article 4(1)), and asks for personal data limited to what is necessary (Article 5(1)(c)); account_ref is your internal company reference, and contact details stay in your CRM.

Dates follow ISO 8601 as YYYY-MM-DD, countries use the two letter codes that ISO 3166 recommends as its general purpose code, and the currency is a three letter ISO 4217 code. Fields marked derived are calculated from other fields.

The formula download defines every count and metric by its numerator and denominator, with the rule for an unavailable value, so it can be set up in any spreadsheet or reporting tool.

Worked example: one month of enquiries

Illustrative example, not Vektor performance data. The numbers are invented to show the arithmetic: one month of 140 enquiries, read 90 days after the month ended, on a first shipment basis in euros.

Reading the worked example

Illustrative example, not Vektor performance data. Two of the 37 quoted RFQs were still pending at the cutoff, one of them a tender whose lanes had been awarded with no order yet, so the booking rate is provisional.

The median time from enquiry to booking was 19 days across the 10 bookings. Three came more than 30 days after the enquiry, so they fall outside a default 30 day Google Ads window even where the enquiry followed an ad click.

Worked example: cost and contribution by source

Illustrative example, not Vektor performance data. Paid search, paid social and organic search from the same invented month; other sources supplied the remaining 7 of the 41 qualified RFQs.

What the cost example shows

Paid social shows why the unavailable rule matters: €350 of spend and no qualified RFQs has no cost per qualified RFQ, and writing €0 or leaving the cell blank would hide the spend. Its contribution to media cost is a real 0.00, because no shipment from it completed.

On a first shipment basis paid search returned 0.49 of its media cost in contribution. Whether its accounts book again is a question for the 12 month basis, a year later.

Limitations and method review

This is our proposed method, not an industry standard, and it measures what your own records can prove. Calls and word of mouth that never reach the record are invisible to it, and acquisition source is only as good as the tracking behind it.

Small cohorts swing: one booking moves a rate built on 10 quoted RFQs by ten points. Print the counts beside every rate, and judge a source over several cohorts rather than one month.

Contribution on a first shipment basis understates channels that win recurring lanes, and the 12 month basis cannot be read until a year has passed. We review the method each quarter and record any change with its date; the next review is due in January 2027.

Monthly cohort scorecard

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Common questions

Summary

Count unique RFQs from one month of enquiries, keep carrier and driver applications apart, and read every rate at a stated cutoff. Divide qualified by unique RFQs, quoted by qualified and booked by quoted, and report unavailable when a denominator is zero or missing. Measure cost per qualified RFQ twice, media only and fully loaded, and judge the result on realised contribution excluding VAT and disbursements, on a value basis you name.

Sources

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Cite this comparison

Vektor Group. Freight RFQ Metrics: From Enquiry to Booked Contribution. Vektor Group, 8 October 2026. https://vektorgroup.eu/marketing/resources/freight-rfq-metrics