411 Info

Our Knowledge = Your Power
Find out what a freight broker is and how we give you fair prices, plan shipments and do the paperwork

Requesting A Quotation

You can request a quotation through your Account Manager
or
You can request a quotation by e-mailing the details to: pricing@copperrun.com

pricing@copperrun.com is continuously monitored by multiple staff from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday

Our pricing department responds to quotation requests as quickly as possible, often in less than an hour. Urgent and same-day-ready quotations are sometimes available within 15 minutes.

However, we also do a triage review of quotation requests as them come in, prioritizing them by shipping date, lane, complexity, and the need for input from our partner suppliers.

Getting To The Lowest Possible Fair Price

Remember – we want to give you the lowest possible all-in Fair Price. Doing so is in both party’s interests. So the more information you can provide us about your freight and your service requirements, the better we will understand your needs, and the lower will be the Fair Price we will be able to offer.

The downside is that, if we are missing important information about your shipment, we have to make assumptions, and when we have to make assumptions we may have to add a contingency factor to our price to allow for the possibility that our assumptions were incorrect.

We base all quotations on trailer floor space. Floor space in one of two ways:

– The number of standard 48” x 48” skid spaces that are required for the freight; or,
– The linear feet of trailer required for the freight.

Absent other information, our default assumption is that each skid require a 48” x 48” floor space that extends all the way to the ceiling (plan for 108”) of a van trailer, or to the highest loadable height on a flat deck. If we are using linear feet of trailer as the measurement, our default assumption is that you require the entire width of the trailer, floor to ceiling.

If you are requesting a full-load price, our quotation will be based on you having the use of an entire 53’ trailer, side-to-side, end-to-end, and floor-to-ceiling. How and whether you use all of the available space is up to you, as long as the freight is legally loaded.

We will attempt to confirm your needs as we prepare the quotation, so please help us with the information: you’ll often get a lower Fair Price.

The Information We Need

Absolutely required:

  • Origin city, province/state, postal/zip code;
  • Destination city, province/state, postal/zip code;
  • Shipment weight;
  • Shipment dimensions, for LTL shipments;
  • Required equipment type (e.g., dry van, temperature controlled van, flat deck, step deck – can be more than one type);
  • Commodity;
  • Commodity value;
  • Special characteristics (e.g., hazardous, temperature control, blind);
  • Transit time / delivery expectations;

Nice to Have:

  • Shipping hours;
  • Receiving hours;
  • Appointment requirement, if any (yes, no, yes, but of truck’s choice);
  • Dock description and access.

The Copper Run Quotation

Copper Run’s quotations provide all-in Fair Prices for the entire service you request:

We do not add extra charges for necessities (e.g., every truck we have ever sourced has required fuel, so we assume the truck we source for you will require fuel, so we include the entire cost of fuel in our quoted prices, with no fuel surcharges).

We do not add extra charges for things we know are going to happen anyway (e.g., there is no possible way to deliver a shipment between Canada to the U.S. without crossing the international border, so we include border-crossing costs in our quoted price).

Similarly, Copper Run’s all-in Fair Prices do not include the costs of providing services you have not requested and/or do not need:

We do not include the cost of temperature control if you do not request temperature control, we do not include the cost of a “no-dock delivery” if you do not tell us that there is no dock at the delivery point, and we do not include the cost of shipping 10 skids if you tell us you are shipping 8 skids.

So if you help us by telling us everything about your freight and your service requirements, we will be able to help you by providing an all-in quotation Fair Price that includes everything you do need, and nothing that you don’t need, at the lowest price possible.

After all, how can you possibly make a reasoned and informed ‘apples-to-apples’ price comparison between multiple potential vendors if some of them have not provided you with all-in pricing, and how can you approve a price or issue a purchase order if the price quotation only includes part of the cost.