What a Carrier Needs Before It Can Quote Accurately

The request usually arrives as two lines. "We need to move 10 pallets from Rayong to Bangkok next week. How much?"

Three carriers reply. One quotes a number, one asks nine questions, and one says nothing for two days. The nine questions look like the slowest option and they are usually the cheapest, because the carrier that asks them is the only one that can price the job instead of pricing a guess.

This is what those questions are for, why each one moves the number, and how to answer all of them in one message so the second round never happens.

A quote is a price for a day, not for goods

The thing a carrier sells is a specific vehicle, with a specific driver, unavailable to anyone else for a defined block of time. Almost all of the cost is committed the moment that block is reserved. Distance adds fuel and tyres. Everything else, the driver's day, the licence, the insurance, the depreciation, the interest on the vehicle, runs whether the deck is full or empty.

So the carrier is not really pricing your pallets. It is pricing an answer to one question: how much of a vehicle's day does this consume, and how likely is it to consume more than expected.

That second half is where vague requests get expensive. A gap in the brief is not free. It gets filled one of two ways:

• Priced at worst case. The carrier assumes the difficult version of every unknown, adds a margin for the ones it cannot assume, and sends you a high number. You read it as expensive and go elsewhere.
• Priced at best case, then corrected. The carrier assumes the easy version, sends a low number, and the correction arrives when the truck is already at your gate and you have no alternative. That is the worst negotiating position available to a shipper.

Neither of those is dishonesty. They are the only two things a carrier can do with missing information.

There is no market average to fall back on

A common assumption is that the carrier could just look up the going rate for the lane. Thailand publishes a national road freight service index, and the way it is published shows why that does not work.

The Trade Policy and Strategy Office builds it in two separate structures, one by what is being carried and one by the type of vehicle carrying it. For the first quarter of 2026 the two headline numbers were both close to flat, up 0.4 percent and up 0.2 percent against the same quarter a year earlier. Underneath, the vehicle types were not flat at all. Long-material semi-trailers were up 1.4 percent, trailers up 0.5 percent, flatbed trucks up 0.2 percent, while liquid tankers were down 1.4 percent, box trucks, dangerous-materials trucks and special-purpose trucks all slightly down.

That is a spread of nearly three percentage points between the top and the bottom, in one quarter, in the same country, under the same diesel price. Commodity groups behaved the same way: industrial freight up, agricultural freight down, in the same three months.

The national average, in other words, is an average of things that are moving in opposite directions. Which vehicle and which commodity are not details that refine a price. They are most of the price. A carrier that quotes before it knows them is quoting the average of two answers, and the average is wrong for both.

The list Thai law already assumes you can write

Before getting to what is useful, it is worth knowing what is expected.

The Civil and Commercial Code does not force these transport documents into existence. The Supreme Court has said plainly that nothing compels the parties to make either one, and that the rules only bite once a document has been issued. But the Code does set out what goes in one if the carrier asks for it, and that list has not needed updating in a century.

If a carrier calls for the goods note (ใบกำกับของ), the consignor must produce one stating:

1. The nature of the goods, and their weight or their size
2. The condition, the number and the marks of the packages
3. The place appointed for delivery
4. The name or trade name and the office of the consignee
5. The place and date the note was issued

And the consignor signs it.

Read that as a checklist rather than as paperwork. It is the minimum set of facts under which somebody can accept responsibility for goods, written down about a century ago, and it is still roughly what a quote needs. If you cannot fill in those five lines, you do not yet have a shipment to quote. You have an intention.

What follows is what a modern Thai road quote needs on top of that, and why.

Weight and volume, always both

The single most common gap is giving one number when the vehicle is constrained by two.

Every truck has a weight limit and a space limit, and a load stops when it reaches either. A three-axle ten-wheel rigid, for example, is capped at 25 tonnes gross on the highway network, and gross means the vehicle and the cargo together, so what you can actually load is that ceiling minus whatever the truck itself weighs. Your carrier knows that figure for its own vehicles. It is not the same for a flatbed, a box body and a refrigerated body of the same wheel count.

Once you know the two ceilings, the crossover is one division:

Crossover density = payload in kilograms ÷ usable load space in cubic metres

Suppose a vehicle can take 15 tonnes of cargo into 38 cubic metres of usable space. The crossover is 15,000 ÷ 38, about 395 kg per cubic metre. Anything denser than that fills the weight first. Anything lighter fills the space first.

That number sorts real freight quickly. Anything liquid is around 1,000 kg per cubic metre and will hit the weight ceiling with the body less than half full. Cased drinks, tinned goods, tiles, fasteners and most metal parts weigh out. Packaged snacks, empty containers, foam, textiles, plastic housings and most consumer packaging cube out, often at a quarter of the permitted weight.

The practical consequence: quoting a weight alone tells the carrier nothing about a light load, and quoting a pallet count alone tells it nothing about a heavy one. Give both, every time. Working out which vehicle those two numbers point to is the next step, and it needs the same pair of figures.

There is a third ceiling that catches people out. If the goods cannot be stacked, the constraint is neither weight nor volume but floor area, and the height of the body stops mattering entirely. A load that occupies the whole deck at knee height costs the same as one that reaches the roof. Say so explicitly: "these cannot be stacked" changes the vehicle far more often than shippers expect.

Two addresses are two work sites

An address tells the carrier where. It does not tell the carrier what happens when the truck gets there, and that is the part that consumes the day.

For each end of the trip, the useful facts are:

• What can physically reach it. Narrow lanes, low clearances, tight turns, weight-restricted local roads, height barriers at the entrance. A vehicle that cannot enter is not cheaper for having been quoted.
• Ground level or dock height. This decides whether a forklift, a tail lift or hands are needed, and those are not interchangeable.
• Who provides the labour and the equipment, and whose people they are. Say who is expected to lift, and who owns the forklift and its driver.
• Opening hours and any booking system. A receiving bay that only accepts deliveries between 08:00 and 11:00 turns a flexible day into a fixed one.
• How long you have historically taken. Not what your process says. What your gate records show. If your average release is 90 minutes and your bad days are four hours, the carrier prices four hours unless you tell it otherwise, and it should. Waiting time is rent on the vehicle's day, and it is the item most often argued about after the fact.

Sites also change. A receiver that was ground-level last year may have installed a dock, and the shipper is usually the last to hear.

Timing: the date, the window, and which end is fixed

Three separate facts, routinely collapsed into one.

• The date. When it can be collected, and when it must arrive.
• The window. Whether either end has a fixed slot, and how hard that slot is. "Before Friday" and "Friday 09:00 to 10:00" are different products.
• Which end is actually fixed. If the delivery appointment is immovable but collection can be a day earlier, say so. That flexibility is worth real money and it costs you nothing. If both ends are fixed and the gap between them is tight, the carrier may need to commit a vehicle overnight, and that has to be in the price.

Notice is a separate lever from urgency, and it does not work the way most people assume. Extra days do not buy a faster truck. They buy a better match between your job and a vehicle that was going that way anyway, which is where the saving comes from.

The two declarations that decide who pays if it goes wrong

Most of the brief affects the price. Two items affect liability, and both sit with you rather than with the carrier.

Dangerous or potentially damaging goods must be declared before the contract is made. The Code is specific about the timing. If the goods are of a nature that can cause danger, or are of a nature liable to cause damage to persons or property, the consignor must state that nature before the contract is made, and a consignor who does not is liable for any damage those goods cause. Not liable in proportion. Liable.

Note where that puts the deadline. Before the contract is made is quoting time, not loading time. Telling the driver at the gate is late, and it is late in a way that has already shifted the risk onto you. This is broader than formally classified dangerous goods, too: anything corrosive, anything under pressure, anything that leaks, anything with a lithium battery in it, anything that can shift, anything that can taint another load. If you would warn a colleague about it, declare it.

Valuables get no protection at all unless you say what they are and what they are worth. For coin, banknotes, bills, bonds, share and debenture certificates, warehouse warrants, gemstones and other valuables, the carrier is not liable if it was not told the value or the nature of the goods at the time of handover. Declare them and the liability exists, but is capped at the value you stated.

That rule cuts both ways, and there is a decided case on each side. In one, a consignor stated at handover that the goods were watches and stated their price; when they were lost the carrier had to pay the full stated price, and a limitation printed on the back of the transport document was void because the consignor had never expressly agreed to it. Silence would have produced nothing.

Neither declaration is a formality, and neither is covered by an insurance policy you bought separately. What cargo insurance covers and what it does not is a different question from what the carrier owes you, and the two are settled under different rules.

Who is being invoiced, and in what name

A surprising number of quote threads stall at the end over billing rather than transport. Include it at the start:

• The exact legal entity name and tax identification number the invoice must carry
• The billing address and the person or inbox that receives it
• Payment terms you actually expect, in days
• Whether you will withhold tax on payment, and at what rate you have concluded applies

That last one matters because the treatment follows what the invoice is for, not what the company calls itself, and a payer that withholds at the wrong rate carries the shortfall. Settling it while the price is still being discussed is much easier than settling it after the first invoice arrives.

How often, and how predictable

One-off and repeating are different products at different prices.

A carrier's economics depend on what the vehicle does after it delivers. An empty return leg is a cost with no revenue against it, and lack of return loads is one of the standard reasons transport gets outsourced in the first place. A single job into a province the carrier has nothing coming back from is priced with that empty leg in it. A weekly job on the same lane can be planned around, paired with somebody else's return, and priced accordingly.

So tell the carrier which one you are:

• Is this a one-off, or the first of something regular?
• If regular, how many a week or month, and on which days?
• Is the volume steady, or does it spike around month end, a season, or a holiday?
• Do you have flows in the other direction, on this lane or any other?

That last question is worth asking yourself even if the answer is no today. A shipper who can offer a return load is a different proposition from one who cannot.

What a wrong brief actually costs

Three failure modes, in rising order of expense.

• The re-quote. New information arrives, the price changes, everybody is mildly annoyed. Cheapest outcome, and the most common.
• The wrong vehicle at your gate. The truck cannot take the load, cannot enter the site, or cannot be loaded with the equipment present. You now pay for a wasted vehicle-day and you still have the shipment. Your alternatives at that moment are whatever is free this afternoon, at whatever it costs.
• The liability shift. An undeclared hazard causes damage, or an undeclared valuable is lost. The money involved here has nothing to do with the freight rate and is usually many multiples of it.

All three are prevented by the same message.

The brief, in one message

Send this, and a competent carrier can price it without a second round.

The goods

• What they are, in plain terms
• Total weight, and total volume or pallet count with dimensions
• Number of packages, and how they are packed
• Stackable or not
• Temperature requirement, if any
• Anything hazardous, pressurised, leaking, tainting, fragile or unusually valuable, stated explicitly

Collection

• Full address
• Access limits: lane width, clearances, turning space
• Ground level or dock
• Who loads, with what equipment
• Opening hours, and any booking system
• Your honest average and worst-case time on site

Delivery

• Everything in the collection list, again, for the receiving site
• The receiver's name and contact, and whether they run appointments
• Any documents that must travel with the goods, and any proof of delivery format the receiver demands

Timing

• Collection date, delivery date
• Any fixed window at either end
• Which end is immovable, and where you have flexibility

Commercial

• One-off or regular, and if regular, how often
• Invoicing entity, tax ID, payment terms, withholding treatment
• Who at your end can make a decision when something changes mid-trip

The reply tells you something too

There is a useful side effect to sending a complete brief. It turns the replies into a comparison of carriers rather than a comparison of assumptions.

Watch what comes back. A carrier that reads a brief like that and still asks about the loading dock has read it. A carrier that returns a price in four minutes without engaging with any of it has priced its own assumptions, and you will meet those assumptions later, at the gate. The one that comes back with a question you had not thought of, about the receiver's appointment system or about how the pallets are wrapped, is showing you how it will handle the day itself.

That is the real return on writing the brief properly. You get a price you can hold someone to, and you learn something about who you are about to hand your goods to.