Optimizing Spot Sourcing: The Strategic Advantage of Early Market Calls
Finding the right time to engage the freight market is crucial for optimizing costs and securing capacity. While many shippers ask about the best timing for both contracted sourcing events (tenders) and spot market activities, tenders are significantly more complex to evaluate. Their success depends on multiple variables: tender history, network setup specifics, evolving requirements, contract length, and current market conditions. These complexities make it impossible to definitively identify an ideal month for launching strategic tenders.
In contrast, the spot market offers fewer structural challenges in measuring results. Our analysis, focusing on data quality and spot transport volume, examines a predefined, qualified basket of carriers per shipper rather than the open market via a marketplace. We analyzed over 350,000 spot transports across Europe in 2024, revealing both expected and surprising patterns. For instance, specific country pairs showed predictable behaviors such as Germany to Poland received more responses for end-of-week loadings, while Poland to Germany saw better response rates for early-week loadings.
To identify patterns, we evaluated several metrics: number of spot quote offers received., transport prices, loading days, and lead times. This article explores quoting patterns, optimal lead times in Europe, and specific country/corridor values.
Our analysis revealed that requesting quotes at least five business days before loading typically generates more offers than shorter lead times. We also found that Friday quotation activities consistently yield fewer offers.
While there is no uniform figure for a price decrease per additional offer received, the general rule that more offers lead to more competition holds true. Specifically, we identified that spot prices achieved on Fridays are higher than on other days, except for eastbound shipments originating from countries like France or Germany, where the opposite is true. As a result geography and truck network rhythms also influence these outcomes.
The most pertinent question is whether we can quantify the advantage of early spot market calls versus one-day-in-advance requests?
The answer is yes, as shown in the following chart.