Rate LTL off your own tariffs.

How the engine resolves a rate

Every quote runs the same four steps, in order. No black box — you can read the resolution off the rating worksheet.

1. Most specific tariff wins. A ZIP-region lane beats a state lane, which beats a general tariff. If you price 303xx→282xx differently from GA→NC at large, the engine uses the ZIP-region rates when the shipment matches.
2. Weight break. The shipment's weight selects one of the six columns on the lane — a 2,400 lb shipment lands in the 2M break (2,000–4,999 lbs).
3. FAK discount. If the tariff carries an FAK class discount, it applies here — mixed-class freight rates at the agreed class instead of each shipment's actual class.
4. Minimum floor. The result is compared against the lane's minimum charge, and the quote never comes back below it.

Worked example, straight from the demo film: a shipper emails a quote request for 4 pallets, 2,400 lbs, Atlanta to Charlotte. The engine matches the GA→NC general tariff, picks the 2M break at $19.85/CWT, and rates 24 CWT × $19.85 = $476.40. One click — “Rate it” — does this on any quote in the pipeline, and the quote-from-email flow does it automatically when the request arrives.

What a tariff lane holds

A Keelway tariff is the whole pricing story for a lane — not a rate field on a load. Six pieces, each one yours:

The six weight breaks, explained

Class-tariff LTL pricing quotes a rate per hundredweight (CWT) that steps down as shipment weight rises — heavier freight is cheaper to handle per pound, and the break columns encode that. Six standard breaks cover the LTL range; at 20,000 lbs and up, freight is typically rated as volume or truckload instead. Here is one lane of a Keelway tariff with example rates:

FAK: how consolidators rate mixed freight

An FAK — Freight All Kinds — is a negotiated pricing arrangement: freight spanning a range of classes rates as a single class. A consolidator's trailer might carry class 60 hardware next to class 125 furniture; instead of rating each shipment at its actual class, the agreement says everything from class 50 through class 125 rates as class 70. The NMFC doesn't define FAKs — the classification stays what it is; the FAK lives in the pricing agreement between you and your customer, and freight outside the agreed range rates at its actual class.

That structure is why consolidators run on FAK ranges: a mixed trailer with one predictable rating class is a business model, not an exception. In Keelway the FAK class discount is a property of the tariff — the engine applies it after the weight break is chosen and before the minimum floor, on every quote, without anyone remembering to. Building the trailer itself is the consolidation side of the module.

Minimum charges: the floor under every quote

Weight-break math alone would let a 180 lb shipment quote for less than the cost of putting a truck on the street. Minimum charges are the industry's answer, and they are first-class in Keelway: every tariff lane carries a minimum-charge floor. After the break rate and FAK discount are applied, the engine compares the result to the lane minimum and returns whichever is higher. Floors are set per lane, so a metro-local lane and a two-state linehaul can carry different minimums — and a quote never leaves the building below either one.

Accessorial rate tables, feeding billing

Accessorials are where LTL revenue leaks. Keelway prices them from your accessorial rate table — liftgate, residential, inside delivery, limited access, appointment fee, reweigh, redelivery — and the same table drives the billing stage of the module, so the charge quoted is the charge invoiced, with driver-pay splits when a charge is payable to the driver. One honest control worth naming: the AI flags which accessorials a shipper's email mentioned — “liftgate at delivery” gets caught, not skimmed past — but your dispatcher prices them into the final quote. Flagged by the machine, priced by you.

Class in, rate out

Class-based rating starts with a class, so the engine is fed by Keelway's density-aware classification. As you enter pieces, weight, and dims, density computes live — 2,400 lbs across 320 ft³ is 7.5 PCF, which suggests class 125 on the current 13-sub NMFC density scale — from measured dims when you have them or a standard-pallet estimate when you don't. It is a suggestion the dispatcher confirms, never an auto-commit. The same suggestion feeds the quote-from-email flow: a shipper's request arrives, the shipment facts are extracted and classified, the rate resolves against these tariffs, and the reply is drafted for your review. You can try the classification math by itself in the free freight class calculator.

When you need SMC3 — and when you don't

SMC3 is the LTL industry's neutral rating infrastructure. CzarLite is its carrier-neutral base-rate tariff — the benchmark much of the industry writes discounts against — and RateWare XL is the rating engine that computes charges off CzarLite and carrier-proprietary base rates. Both are licensed products, sold through sales conversations rather than a pricing page, and both are genuinely useful in the situations they were built for.

A carrier genuinely needs them in two cases. First, when customer contracts are priced off CzarLite: if a 3PL agreement reads “X% off CzarLite,” you need the licensed base to compute the same numbers your customer computes. Second, interline settlement: when you hand freight to partner carriers and settle against a neutral base, both sides need the same tariff.

For most 5–50 door carriers quoting their own lanes, neither applies. Your tariff is already yours — your lanes, your breaks, your minimums. You don't need to license a neutral rate base to discount against when you aren't discounting against a neutral rate base. That is the case Keelway's rating engine is built for; if your book later grows CzarLite-priced contracts, that is a real reason to add an SMC3 license — not a reason to have started with one. The full teardown is in the SMC3 RateWare alternative deep dive.

How your tariffs get in

Bring one lane you quote every week. We load your rates with you — the lane, the six break rates, the FAK discount, the minimum — then forward a real quote request email and watch it come back rated. Ten minutes, your numbers, not a sandbox. Loading the rest of your lanes from there is data entry you already know.

One scope note: this page is for carriers who sell LTL capacity off their own tariffs. If you broker LTL — buying capacity from carriers — the product for your side is Keelway's LTL broker software.