Carriers & Rate Cards

Carriers are the companies that move your freight: your own fleet and any subcontractors. Each carrier holds its drivers, vehicles and rate cards.

Running your own trucks? Add your own company as a carrier. Put your trucks under it as vehicles, and pick it when you dispatch jobs you carry yourself.

Carrier details

Field	Notes
Name / Code	The code is a short reference, for example `NTL`.
Type	Road, Air, Sea, Rail, Courier or Multi-modal.
Email / Phone	The carrier's office contact.
City / Country	Where the carrier is based.
Regulatory IDs	These follow your workspace's home country: United States: SCAC, MC Number, DOT Number Canada: NSC Number United Kingdom: O-Licence Number India: GSTIN
Insurance / Contract Expiry	Under Compliance & Contract. Keep these up to date before you dispatch.
Notes	Internal only.

Drivers and vehicles

A carrier's page has a Drivers card and a Vehicles card:

Drivers: lists the carrier's drivers, with licence-expired warnings. Adding a driver here opens Drivers → New Driver with this carrier already chosen as the employer.
Vehicles: click Add Vehicle and enter the plate number, type (Truck, Van, Trailer, Container or Other), make, model and capacity. Plate numbers must be unique within the carrier.

To let a subcontracted carrier accept jobs online, create a carrier login in Users (account type Carrier). They then use the Work Portal.

Rate cards

A rate card is a price list from a carrier. Click New Rate Card on the carrier's page and fill in:

Name, Mode (road, air, sea, rail, courier or multi-modal) and Currency.
Effective From and, optionally, Effective To. Only cards that are in date and active are used for rate shopping.
One or more rate lines (see below).

Rate lines

Field	Notes
Origin / Dest zone	Matched against the location's city (a partial match is enough). Use `any` to match every city.
Service	Optional service type, for example FTL or LTL.
Rate type	Flat: one price per shipment. Per kg: charged by weight. Per CBM: charged by volume. Per unit. Per km / Per mile: needs coordinates on both locations.
Base	The rate for the chosen rate type.
Fuel%	Fuel surcharge, as a percentage of the base amount.
Min	Minimum charge. The price never goes below this.

Price = the larger of (base amount + fuel surcharge) and the minimum charge. To change a rate, remove the line or card and add a new one.

Rate shopping

When you create or edit a shipment, click Rate shopping. Optrix checks every active carrier's valid rate cards for the shipment's route, service, weight and volume, and lists the prices cheapest first. Pick one to fill in the carrier and charges.

No results? Check that the zones match the cities on your locations, that the card's dates cover today, and that distance-based rates have latitude and longitude on both locations.

Last updated September 2026 · Something unclear or out of date? Tell us.