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LTL · All-in quotes · AI-native

Every LTL quote, assembled all-in — before the coordinator re-keys a thing.

An LTL quote is never a single number. Linehaul, fuel, accessorials, and freight class each price separately and arrive scattered across a carrier's email reply. Keelway reads every reply, pulls those pieces out, and reconciles them against the load — so each carrier shows up as one comparable all-in quote, with accessorial and reclass-risk gaps flagged and your margin held in view. It normalizes what carriers sent; it does not invent rates.

See LTL quoting liveKeelway LTL overview
4
cost layers in an all-in LTL quote: linehaul, fuel, accessorials, class
18
NMFC freight classes (50–500) that move the rate
0
rates Keelway invents — it normalizes what carriers send

The all-in LTL quote problem

Truckload quoting is mostly one number on a lane. LTL quoting is four moving parts stacked on top of each other. The linehaul is the base charge. The fuel surcharge rides on top as a percentage that shifts weekly. Accessorials — liftgate, residential delivery, inside delivery, notification, detention — get added per service, and each carrier states them differently or not at all. And the freight class the shipment is rated at scales the whole thing. Two carriers can quote the same linehaul and land hundreds of dollars apart once the other three layers settle.

Which means the number a carrier leads with in an email tells a coordinator almost nothing about who is actually cheapest. To compare honestly you have to assemble every quote to all-in terms — and doing that by hand, across a dozen replies in a dozen formats, is where LTL quoting eats the day.

Why manual LTL quoting is slow and error-prone

Carriers do not fill out a form. An LTL reply might be a clean rate table, a dispatcher's two-line email, or a PDF rate sheet with the accessorials in a footnote. A coordinator opens each one, hunts for the linehaul, checks whether fuel is included or separate, scans for accessorials that may or may not be mentioned, and confirms the class matches the load — then does it again for the next reply. It is slow, and worse, it is where quotes go wrong: a missed liftgate here, a class assumption there, and the quote that shipped no longer matches the invoice that arrives.

The two costliest misses are accessorials that were never priced and a freight class that was never verified. Both surface after delivery as an invoice dispute — the most expensive place to find them.

How Keelway assembles the all-in quote

Keelway runs the same LLM extraction pipeline it uses for carrier rate extraction, tuned for the LTL case. Every inbound reply is read the moment it lands, the cost layers are pulled out and reconciled against the load, and the result is a comparable all-in quote per carrier.

Extract

Pull every cost layer from the reply

Linehaul, fuel surcharge, stated accessorials, and any referenced NMFC class or dimensions come out of each carrier email — plain text or PDF rate sheet — as structured fields. Nothing is retyped; the coordinator's eyes never have to hunt paragraph three for a detention assumption.
Normalize

Reconcile to comparable all-in terms

The extracted pieces are reconciled against the load's declared weight, dimensions, and class, then rolled into a single all-in figure per carrier. Ten replies become ten quotes you can actually line up side by side, instead of ten linehaul numbers hiding ten different accessorial stacks.
Accessorials

Surface the gaps before booking

Keelway compares each quote's accessorials against what the load requires — liftgate, residential, inside delivery, notification, detention, reclass risk. When a carrier's quote doesn't address one the load needs, that gap shows up as an open item on the ranked quote, not on a post-delivery invoice.
Class

Flag class and density mismatches

When a carrier quotes against a class or dimensions that differ from your load spec, Keelway surfaces the mismatch rather than averaging it away. It does not assign class or compute density as an authority — see what is NMFC freight class — it makes the discrepancy impossible to miss so a human resolves it.
Margin

Keep the spread in view

Each all-in quote sits next to your target sell price, so the margin impact stays visible while you compare. A low linehaul that hides a liftgate and a residential fee stops looking like the cheap option the moment it's expressed all-in against your sell.
Write-back

Record the quote that won

On acceptance, the carrier, the confirmed all-in rate, the freight class, and any accessorial or transit notes captured from the thread write back to your TMS — Tai, McLeod, Aljex, Revenova, Turvo, or Rose Rocket. The winning quote becomes the load record, with the agreed terms in the file if a dispute ever arises.

Accessorials: where LTL margin quietly leaks

Accessorial disputes are a known LTL cost center, and the root cause is almost always the same: the accessorial was ambiguous or unaddressed at the moment of quoting. Keelway moves that clarification upstream. By surfacing accessorial gaps on the ranked quote — before booking — it turns a post-delivery invoice fight into a one-line question a coordinator asks the carrier while the load is still being covered. The accessorial terms you land on are captured in the email thread and the accepted-carrier record, so the agreement is in the file, not lost in an inbox.

Class and density: surfaced, not invented

Freight class scales the entire LTL rate, so a wrong class is a wrong quote. Keelway captures the class or dimensions a carrier or shipper states and flags any disagreement with your load record — but it stops there deliberately. It does not assign class, look up NMFC codes, or compute density on your behalf as an authority. That honest boundary is the point: the software makes the mismatch obvious; a human, using the NMFC and the commodity's real specs, decides the class. The deeper mechanics live in the NMFC freight class guide.

Write the winning quote back to the TMS

Quoting that ends in a spreadsheet or a Gmail thread is quoting you pay for twice — once to build the quote, again to re-key it. When a coordinator accepts a carrier from the ranked list, Keelway writes the accepted carrier, the confirmed all-in rate, the class, and the accessorial and transit notes back to the connected TMS. The raw extracted quotes persist as an audit trail of every carrier who replied and what they quoted, so operations and finance have the full record without anyone re-typing it.

Where LTL rate quoting fits the triage workflow

Rate quoting is one stage of the broader LTL triage pipeline. The same inbound replies are scored for carrier trust against FMCSA and fraud signals, and both the all-in quote and the trust signal feed the composite ranking that surfaces the carriers worth working first. For the full LTL picture — volume handling, transit SLAs, LTL authority checks, and how it all fits together — see the Keelway LTL module page, or start from what is LTL freight brokerage for the fundamentals.

Frequently asked questions

What is an all-in LTL quote?+
An all-in LTL quote is the total delivered price of a less-than-truckload shipment with every cost component included: linehaul (the base transportation charge), fuel surcharge, any applicable accessorials (liftgate, residential delivery, inside delivery, notification, detention, and similar), and the effect of the freight class the shipment is rated at. Because those pieces are priced separately and often arrive scattered across a carrier's email reply, two quotes with the same linehaul can have very different all-in costs. Keelway assembles the all-in figure so quotes are compared on equal terms.
How does Keelway build an LTL quote from a carrier email?+
Keelway runs an LLM extraction pass on every inbound carrier reply. It pulls the linehaul rate, fuel surcharge, any stated accessorials, and any referenced NMFC class or dimensions out of the email — including PDF rate sheets — and reconciles them against the load's declared weight, dimensions, and class. The output is a structured, all-in LTL quote per carrier, ranked on comparable terms, rather than a linehaul figure a coordinator has to re-key into a rating tool to make sense of.
Does Keelway invent or generate LTL rates?+
No. Keelway does not invent rates, set freight class, or fabricate accessorial charges. It normalizes and surfaces what carriers actually quoted in their emails. If a carrier's quote omits an accessorial the load requires, Keelway flags the gap rather than guessing a number; if the quoted class differs from your load spec, it surfaces the mismatch rather than silently averaging it away. The goal is a faster, honest comparison of real carrier quotes — not a rate the software made up.
What accessorials does Keelway surface?+
Keelway parses accessorial language from carrier replies and compares it against the accessorials specified on the load — liftgate at pickup or delivery, residential or limited-access delivery, inside delivery, notification/appointment fees, detention, and reclassification/reweigh risk. When a carrier's quote doesn't address an accessorial the load requires, that gap surfaces as an open item on the ranked quote before booking, which is where accessorial ambiguity should be resolved rather than in a post-delivery invoice dispute.
How does Keelway keep margin visible during quoting?+
As carrier quotes are normalized to all-in terms, Keelway holds them next to your target sell price so the spread stays visible while you compare — you see what each carrier's true delivered cost does to margin, not just whose linehaul looks lowest. A carrier with a low linehaul that hides a liftgate and a residential fee can quietly be the worse margin choice, and normalizing to all-in is what makes that obvious at a glance.
Does the winning quote write back to my TMS?+
Yes. When a coordinator accepts a carrier, Keelway writes the accepted carrier, the confirmed all-in rate, the freight class, and any accessorial or transit-time notes captured from the email thread back to your TMS — Tai, McLeod, Aljex, Revenova, Turvo, or Rose Rocket. The quote that won is the quote that gets recorded, with no retyping and no data that only lives in Gmail.
How does Keelway handle freight class in a quote?+
Keelway captures the NMFC class or dimensions a carrier states and compares them to the class on your load record. If they disagree, it flags the mismatch so it can be resolved before booking. Keelway does not assign class or compute density as an authority — that remains a human decision informed by the NMFC. For a full explanation of how class and density work, see our guide to NMFC freight class.
Does this work on mixed LTL and truckload books?+
Yes. Most coordinators who quote LTL also handle some truckload freight. Keelway's extraction and ranking are load-type aware — LTL quotes get LTL-specific handling (class, accessorials, transit SLA) while truckload quotes get lane-and-equipment handling — and the coordinator works a single ranked list per load regardless of mode.
All-in quotes · Accessorials surfaced · Margin visible

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Related

Keelway LTL →

The full LTL picture — quote-from-email, tariff rating, consolidation, dispatch, and billing on one record.

What Is NMFC Freight Class? →

The 18 classes, the four factors, how to calculate density, and why misclassification triggers reclass fees.

What Is LTL Freight Brokerage? →

LTL vs. FTL, what an LTL broker does, how LTL pricing works, and where an AI carrier rep fits.

Carrier Rate Extraction →

The underlying LLM pipeline that reads every carrier email format and structures the rate — LTL and truckload.