4 min read

Can Rate Hacking Save You Money on Carrier Fees?

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With the right logistics software, you can save 5-10 minutes per shipment and up to 30% on average shipping costs. With FreightPOP, you are given a side-by-side comparison of carrier rates—including your negotiated contract rates, spot rates, and FreightPOP’s partner rates—that lets you rate shop as effectively (and quickly!) as possible. We also provide a rate hacking tool that provides even more savings options—albeit in less obvious ways than you may be familiar with. 

Rate Hacking


The concept itself is simple. In the airline industry, frequent travelers find hacker fares by switching legs en route, combining multiple carriers or one-way fares for round trips, or using automated rate scanning to pounce on rate drops or rate mistakes. 

With FreightPOP's transportation management system (TMS), this same concept is put to work for you to help uncover hidden rates. Mixing carriers, legs, shipment methods, and service levels often results in significant savings.

For high-volume shippers, however, trying to uncover these rates manually just isn’t feasible. You need a logistics automation management solution for rate hacking at scale.

FreightPOP’s Freight RateHACKER


Freight RateHACKER automatically surfaces options for lower freight rates. 

Depending on the shipment and its requirements, you may be able to route freight differently to save money while extending delivery dates. If you can still meet your agreed-upon delivery dates, you can often save quite a lot.

Freight RateHACKER provides options for you to choose from. In the example below, by selecting multiple carriers and legs and extending delivery times from three days to five days, you can reduce shipping costs by 20%. Using multiple legs and carriers within a seven-day delivery window can cut costs by as much as 40%.

freight rateHACKER


While you may not always have the option to add days to deliveries, it can make a big difference when the option is available. Knowing such rate hacks are available can open additional efficiencies, such as evolving your workflow and supply chains to provide more lead time and lower overall costs.

FreightPOP’s Freight RateHACKER algorithm matches nearly endless combinations from all available carriers to identify the best combination to get your shipment to its destination, even if that means adding additional spots in between. Based on your set parameters, you can streamline your dispatching and find the best rates to suit your needs.

FreightPOP also leverages advanced freight logistics planning, such as SmartPOOL Distribution, to consolidate freight and parcel loads for even greater savings. This helps you find cost-efficient ways to ship directly to consolidation centers or transport a consolidated load to distribution centers.

Part of a Robust Logistics Automation Solution


RateHACKER is just one part of FreightPOP’s robust supply chain, logistics, and shipping platform that optimizes shipping costs and deliveries, identifies the best carriers and rates, and produces predictable shipping costs even during times of volatile capacity and rates.

With FreightPOP, you can automate most of the shipping ecosystem by applying preconfigured business rules that ensure you always comply with policies and protocols. By comparing contract rates, current market rates, and FreightPOP’s negotiated rates and leveraging RateHACKER, you have multiple options for reducing freight costs.

You can dispatch with one click or enable FreightPOP’s automated dispatching to ship freight without human intervention, always choosing the lowest rates and managing shipping at scale. On average, FreightPOP customers using Auto Dispatch are experiencing a 95% reduction in average processing time.

Once en route, FreightPOP automatically tracks shipments. And when invoices arrive, they are automatically matched up with orders to aggressively isolate errors and ensure the rates charged match those you agreed to pay.

FreightPOP gives you complete visibility into your entire shipping and logistics, finds the lowest freight rates, and significantly reduces manual work.

One-Click Shipping Management


FreightPOPs one-click shipping management streamlines tasks, minimizes errors, and leverages data analytics to make smarter, cost-saving decisions. Find other ways to automate by downloading our new ebook:
How Logistics Automation Saves Time and Money.

automation and auto dispatch