RFPs Are Stuck in 2005. Here's How Smart Brokers Are Catching Up
On this episode of Freight Marketing Gurus, we sat down with Kevin Miles, co-founder and CEO of Eureka, a platform built to help logistics companies process RFPs faster and bid more competitively.
Our conversation kept coming back to one thing: freight RFP pricing, and why it is still so hard for brokers to get right. Freight RFP pricing is how brokers and logistics companies price the individual lanes in a shipper’s request for proposal, and getting it wrong can quietly erode a full year of margin.
Kevin cut his teeth as an industrial engineer at UPS, back when 13 million packages a day were moving through his facility, so it’s no surprise he ended up obsessed with process and efficiency.
We covered a lot: why RFPs feel stuck in the early 2000s, the hidden cost of mispriced lanes, the shift from gut feel to data, and where AI is actually taking this industry. Here are the highlights from our conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
Key Takeaways
- Most freight RFP pricing still runs on tribal knowledge and sprawling spreadsheets, which breaks down the moment a key person leaves.
- The brokers who win consistently rely on two things: discipline and repeatability.
- A mispriced lane is worse than losing the lane. You commit, margin erodes, and you end up asking the shipper for relief.
- Data is now a commodity. The edge comes from making it apply to your own company, your carriers, and your lane history.
What's broken about how logistics companies handle RFPs today?
Kevin: Honestly, the industry is kind of stuck in 2005. Way back when, you’d get an RFP and there was somebody on the team who just knew it. They knew the lanes, knew the markets like the back of their hand.
They could price it without much technology and without going outside the company. It was a smaller market, and it worked. Someone could say, “I know Chicago to Atlanta all day, every day, and I don’t need a tool to tell me that.”
Jennie: But what happens when that person retires, or goes on vacation?
Kevin: Exactly. They go out, and now someone else is left to figure it out. There’s no process in place, no history, nothing to fall back on. That’s what we’re trying to solve. If you have a process that’s repeatable and can scale as your company grows, then when that person retires (or hits the lottery, or just takes a vacation) there’s not a big blip in the road. You don’t end up saying, “We just can’t do this RFP today because that person isn’t here.”
What separates brokers who win freight RFPs from those who struggle?
Kevin: It comes down to two things: discipline and repeatability. The discipline to say, “This is how we price. We know where we’re strong, we know where we’re weak. We’ll be aggressive in some areas and conservative in others.”
And the repeatability to know exactly where to go for that information every time, so you’re not starting from scratch. Otherwise, it’s a fire drill every time an RFP comes in, and you’re pulling the whole team together.
Why freight RFP pricing turns into spreadsheet chaos
Jennie: You’ve described the current state as “spreadsheet chaos.” Walk me through that.
Kevin: The old way was: let’s pull rates from an external engine, DAT, Truckstop, Triumph, then look at our own company history, then see what else is available in the market. People pull all of that together, and it lives in spreadsheets. Tabs and tabs of them. If someone makes an error in one row or column, it throws everything off.
And there’s a real fatigue to it. This work happens on weekends, after your regular nine-to-five, and a “small” bid might be a thousand lanes. Folks tell me they get spreadsheet fatigue. They push through the first hundred lanes, then two hundred, and by then they’re done. That’s when you miss the golden nuggets, the lanes where you actually have an edge.
How Eureka surfaces the "golden nugget" lanes
Jennie: How does Eureka surface those golden nuggets?
Kevin: We pull pricing data in through our partners, and because we’re API-capable, we connect to whatever TMS a company already uses. Then we show them a competitive advantage score. It looks at how many carriers you have in a lane, not just one or two, and how your rates compare to the market, and gives you a score.
The biggest piece is history: have you done this lane before? If you’ve already run 10% of the lanes in a bid, start there. A lot of companies can’t, because that data is locked up in their TMS where they can’t easily get to it.
Gut feel vs. data: is data-driven freight pricing more accurate?
Jennie: Talk about the shift from gut feel to data. Is data-driven pricing actually more accurate?
Kevin: It is, but here’s the nuance. Data is a commodity now. There’s no shortage of it. The challenge is making it apply to your company, your behavior, your carrier coverage. Going from “I just know this lane” to “I have data points telling me this is a good or bad lane for me,” that’s the difference. Now your decision is defensible.
There’s a hidden cost to getting this wrong. A mispriced lane is worse than not winning the lane at all. You’ve committed, the margin erosion starts, you thought you’d make 10% and now you’re underwater by 5%. Then come the tough internal conversations, and eventually you’re going back to the shipper to ask for relief, which is never a fun conversation to be on the wrong side of
A real freight RFP pricing use case: the 2,000-lane bid
Jennie: Can you share a real use case?
Kevin: A customer came to us with a roughly 2,000-lane RFP. We had a call up front about their pricing strategy. They were strong out of the Southeast and wanted to price that aggressively. But using our insights, we flagged lanes outside that comfort zone where they actually had carrier coverage they didn’t realize they had. Their words: “We would never have even bid those lanes.” They ended up winning over 1,000 loads a year off the lanes they would have skipped, and felt confident those rates were profitable.
Where is freight RFP pricing headed in five years?
Jennie: Everyone at Manifest this year was an “AI company.” Where do you actually see this going in five years?
Kevin: Pricing intelligence is going to be table stakes. Everyone will have a tool for it. AI will absolutely play a role, and it’ll probably reduce headcount on large pricing teams because people can do more. But it won’t replace people. If you weren’t pricing well before, AI isn’t a silver bullet. You still need a good practice and infrastructure in place.
Logistics is still a relationship industry. You’ll always need a human auditing the work, because AI can still hallucinate. And you’ll need someone building the relationships and communicating nuance back to the shipper. That can’t be done by the numbers alone.
Kevin's secret sauce
Jennie: Last one, your secret sauce. One thing that’s made you successful.
Kevin: PNC: persistence and consistency. Consistency is really tough today with all the distractions: the phones, the screens, the attention seekers. But I believe the people who stay persistent and consistent at what they’re trying to solve will ultimately be successful. That’s what’s worked for me.
There’s a lot more in the full episode: Kevin’s take on the hidden cost of accessorials and fuel, the three forces reshaping freight right now, and why he thinks legacy systems that won’t adapt are on borrowed time.
Listen to the full episode of Freight Marketing Gurus with Kevin Miles of Eureka. If it helps you sharpen your own freight RFP pricing, share it with someone on your pricing team.
Freight RFP pricing FAQs
What is freight RFP pricing? Freight RFP pricing is the process brokers and logistics companies use to price the individual lanes in a shipper’s request for proposal. It combines external market rates, a company’s own shipment history, and carrier coverage to set rates that are both competitive and profitable.
Why is freight RFP pricing so hard for brokers? Most of the work still lives in spreadsheets, often built on one person’s market knowledge. A single bid can run a thousand lanes or more, the work spills into nights and weekends, and a small error in one row can throw off the whole sheet.
Is data-driven freight pricing more accurate than gut feel? Yes, when the data is made specific to your company. Data on its own is a commodity. The accuracy comes from applying it to your carrier coverage, your lane history, and your behavior, which turns a hunch into a defensible decision.
Will AI replace freight pricing teams? Not entirely. AI is expected to reduce headcount on large pricing teams because each person can do more, but logistics remains a relationship industry. Humans are still needed to audit the work, since AI can hallucinate, and to communicate nuance back to shippers.
FR8 Marketing Gurus
A podcast where freight, logistics, and supply chain leaders come to talk real marketing.
