The rate is the product. Not the PDF it arrived in.
A marketplace where freight agents publish lane rates as structured objects, and buyers browse by origin, destination and mode, then pick one. We built the whole system. The operator did not take it to market.
A rate is still a document someone emails.
An agent has a lane, a validity window, a surcharge schedule and a transit. That object currently lives in a PDF, a spreadsheet, or a message. A buyer comparing three agents is comparing three formats. Nobody can see the market. The people who know the rates are the people who typed them last Thursday, and the numbers are already stale.
If the rate cannot be queried, it cannot be sold.
Validity lapses and nobody notices. A surcharge applies and it is still sitting in a footnote. Two agents quote the same lane in different currencies and the buyer does the arithmetic by hand. The commercial layer of freight is treated as paperwork. It is the work.
A live exchange for published rates, the whole commercial system, not a prototype.
Agents run a storefront. They put up rates against a lane: origin, destination, mode, currency, validity, transit, and the surcharge schedule that actually applies. Buyers search by lane, filter what is current, and select a rate. The rate is a structured object with rules, not a file. Booking intent sits on top of that object so a selection is a commercial event, not a screenshot.
How it works.
The lane is the unit.
Origin, destination, mode, and the service. A rate that cannot be placed on a lane cannot be found, compared, or expired. This is the model everything else hangs on.
Agents publish against that unit.
Validity, currency, transit, inclusions, and the surcharge schedule. The agent owns the storefront. They withdraw a rate the same way they put it up. Nothing is scraped off a brochure.
Buyers browse a market, not an inbox.
Filter by lane, by what is still valid, by mode. Compare what is actually current. The format is the same because the object is the same.
A selection is a commercial event.
Choosing a rate is not a screenshot. It carries the agent, the lane, the validity, and the terms as they stood at the moment of selection: the record a desk can act on.
What is in the system.
Lane model
Origins, destinations, modes and service levels as data, so a rate can be found the way a buyer actually looks: by where it goes, not by who emailed.
Surcharge and validity
The part most software treats as a footnote. BAF, war risk, congestion, a window that closes on a Friday. If this is not in the object, the published number is a lie.
Agent storefronts
Each agent publishes, edits and withdraws their own book. They are not a row in someone else's spreadsheet.
Selection and intent
The buyer's choice is stored against the rate as it stood. The desk can see what was on the table, not what the PDF said last month.
What this replaces.
The Thursday spreadsheet
A book that is current until it is forwarded, and then it is a copy. There is no withdrawal. There is no validity. There is a file.
Three PDFs, three formats
A buyer doing the work of a market by hand, and still not knowing if a number is live.
The WhatsApp quote
A rate that cannot be found next week, and cannot be shown to anyone who was not in the thread.
The system was finished. The company that commissioned it was not.
We were hired to build the marketplace: the model, the storefronts, the browse, the selection, the commercial event. We delivered it. The founder did not take the company to market. That is a fact about the vehicle, not about the work. We do not put a dead brand on this page. We put the system, because the system is what we sell the next time a rate book is the product.
Delivered complete
Not a clickable mock. The publish, search, validity and selection path ran as an application.
The commercial layer is the product
Rates, validity, surcharges and the agent who owns them. This is the same instinct as a rate card applied on a live job: different surface, same object.
We will build it again
For an operator who intends to run it. The work is not contingent on the last logo.
If the rate is still a PDF, the market is still a rumour.
We know how to put a live book in front of the people who buy from it. If that is the system you need, the fact that one operator walked away is not the story we will tell about yours.
Book a scoping call