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A broker in Dallas told me to quit padding my quotes...
I used to add 15% to every enclosed transport quote to cover random delays, and my dispatch manager called me out on it after I lost a client in Phoenix. He said the extra cushion was making my bids look greedy next to carriers who itemized the real costs. Has anyone else had to strip their buffer down and find other ways to protect against weather or route changes?
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west.alice16d ago
Why do we all do this in every part of life, not just transport? Think about how people price anything, they bake in a little extra for the bad days, the surprise costs, the stuff that always seems to go wrong. A contractor pads a reno bid, a landlord bumps rent for the what-ifs, a restaurant charges a bit more to cover wasted food. Then someone else comes along with a clean itemized number and suddenly the padded price looks like you're just being shady. But here's the thing, the buffer was never greed, it was survival insurance, and when you strip it out you're basically betting nothing goes wrong. So the real question is how you make that bet without getting wiped out by one bad weather week. I've seen people do it by being upfront about the exact line items instead of hiding a flat percent, so the client sees where the risk actually lives. That way you keep your safety net but it doesn't read as a sneaky markup.
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