Faster turnaround times all around - what our customer Morgan King likes about Quick Quotes

Can you briefly describe your business and your role in it?

Manitoulin Global Forwarding is a Canadian-owned freight forwarder with offices across Canada as well as in the US and Mexico. I take care of our two offices in the Vancouver, BC, area: Manitoulin Global Forwarding (MGF) and Canfleet Logistics. MGF handles our airfreight and ocean imports, while Canfleet takes care of export ocean with a major focus on commodities, such as forestry products, agricultural goods, reefer cargoes, mining products, some scrap products, etc. My role is to oversee both the sales and operations of the two offices, with a strong focus on an ongoing positive customer experience, while continuing to grow our business and brand in British Columbia.

How do you usually get freight rates from carriers? What are the main challenges involved?

The main way to get ocean pricing continues to be email for the most part. Without a doubt, this is the primary form of communication in our industry. We obviously have many pre-negotiated contracts for specific lanes, and some carriers quite regularly send out rate sheets or a matrix for certain port pairs and commodities. However, for the most part, everything starts or ends with an email one way or another.

The challenges here are that carriers are fighting what must feel like a never-ending rising tide of emails, and therefore the response times can vary. This will generally depend on how big or small a carrier's sales team is and where it is located in the world. Additionally, time zones can play a big factor and, of course, IT issues or problems can have an impact, too. Requests will pile up, and backlogs can form very quickly.