Tender Acceptance Rate and Rejection Index for Shippers

The quarterly business review shows the primary carrier on the Dallas lane at 93% acceptance, and the procurement team renews the contract. Meanwhile the freight budget is over by almost $19,000 on that lane alone, because a quarter of its loads went to backup carriers and the spot market. Both numbers are correct. The 93% counted loads that were eventually covered; it never counted how many times the primary carrier said no.

Tender acceptance is a simple ratio with a hard denominator. Counted from tender events rather than from the load table, with timeouts and re-tenders handled by written rules, it shows where the routing guide is failing weeks before the invoices do. Paired with routing-guide depth and spot leakage, it gives procurement a cost for every point of acceptance lost.

• What this guide covers: the formula and its edge cases, how to count tenders from EDI 204 and 990 messages or from indents, routing-guide depth, spot leakage and a shipper-built rejection index.
• What it adds: a worked quarter for one US lane in dollars and one Indian lane in rupees, a SQL query, a timestamped failure week and a scorecard checklist.

Tender acceptance rate: the formula and the denominator that matters

Tender acceptance rate is accepted tenders divided by tenders offered to that carrier in the period, counted per tender event. The denominator is the whole argument: count loads instead of tenders and a carrier that rejects often can still look reliable.

A routing guide sends each load first to the primary carrier for its lane, then to backups in order, and finally to the spot market or a broker. Each offer is a tender. A load that took three offers to cover generates three tender events, two rejections and one acceptance, but only one load. Carrier-level acceptance must use the events; network coverage can use the loads.

Counting offers and responses from 204, 990 and indent records

Count acceptance from the messages or records that carry the offer and the answer, never from the load's final carrier field. In US truckload that means the X12 204 Motor Carrier Load Tender and the 990 Response to a Load Tender; in India it usually means indent records in a TMS, portal or spreadsheet.

A 204 carries a purpose code in its B2A segment: 00 for an original tender, 01 for a cancellation, 04 for a change and 05 for a replacement. The 990 reply carries the carrier's SCAC, the shipment identifier and a reservation action code in B1. Code A means accepted; carriers commonly send D to decline, though the code list also defines E as declined.

• Offer event: each 204 with purpose 00 sent to a carrier, or each indent issued to a transporter, opens one tender.
• Acceptance event: a 990 with B104 = A, or an indent marked accepted by the transporter, within the response window.
• Rejection event: a 990 with B104 = D or E, an indent marked declined, or no answer by the end of the window.
• Change to a live tender: a 204 with purpose 04 does not open a new tender unless the change voids the carrier's acceptance under the contract.
• Shipper cancellation: a 204 with purpose 01 before the carrier answered removes the tender from the denominator; after acceptance it is a shipper failure, recorded separately.

Each record behind the ratio has a different owner, and disagreements usually come from two teams counting different records. The table names who keeps each one and who signs off the monthly figure before it reaches a carrier review.

Carrier tender acceptance rate in a truckload routing guide equals 990 responses with reservation action code A divided by original 204 tenders (B2A purpose code 00) offered to that carrier, with response-window timeouts counted as rejections; on the worked lane, 62 primary rejections from 260 tenders give 76.2 percent.

Edge cases that quietly inflate or deflate acceptance

Write the edge-case rules down before the first carrier review, because every carrier will challenge the ones that hurt it. Most disputes are about timeouts, re-tenders and loads that fall off after acceptance.

• Timeouts: no answer by the end of the agreed window is a rejection for scoring, even if the carrier later says it would have taken the load.
• Short-notice tenders: offers made inside the contract's minimum lead time should be tagged and reported separately, not dropped; dropping them hides a shipper planning problem.
• Accept, then fail: a carrier that accepts and later cancels or fails to arrive counts as accepted for the ratio but appears in a separate fall-off rate, which often matters more.
• Re-tender after a material change: if the shipper moves the pickup day or adds a stop and the carrier declines, the decline belongs to the changed tender, and the original acceptance stays on record.
• Manual tenders: phone or email offers must be keyed into the tender log with a timestamp, or the planners who use them most will appear to have perfect carriers.
• Indian vehicle placement: a transporter that accepts an indent but places no vehicle by the reporting time is a fall-off; indent acceptance without placement is covered in our indent acceptance and placement guide.

The query below applies these rules to a tender event table. It assumes one row per offer, with the response code and timestamps captured from the 990 or the indent screen, and a flag for offers made inside the contract's minimum lead time.

-- Carrier tender acceptance by lane and month, from tender events
-- tender_event: one row per offer (204 purpose 00 or indent issued)
--   resp_code: 'A' accepted, 'D'/'E' declined, NULL no response
--   window_end: offer time + contracted response window
SELECT lane_id, carrier_scac,
       date_trunc('month', offered_at)                         AS month,
       COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE NOT shipper_cancelled_pre_resp)  AS offered,
       COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE resp_code = 'A'
                          AND responded_at <= window_end)      AS accepted,
       COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE resp_code IN ('D','E')
                          OR responded_at IS NULL
                          OR responded_at > window_end)       AS rejected_or_timeout,
       COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE short_notice)                    AS short_notice_offers,
       ROUND(100.0 * COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE resp_code = 'A'
                          AND responded_at <= window_end)
             / NULLIF(COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE NOT shipper_cancelled_pre_resp), 0), 1)
                                                               AS acceptance_pct
FROM tender_event
GROUP BY 1, 2, 3;
-- Fall-off rate: accepted offers later cancelled by the carrier or with no
-- vehicle placed, divided by accepted offers. Report beside acceptance_pct.

Routing-guide depth and where rejected loads end up

Routing-guide depth is the average position of the carrier that finally covered each load, with spot counted as the last position. A depth of 1.0 means every primary accepted; anything above 1.3 means a meaningful share of freight is being priced off-contract.

Depth turns rejection into a path. One rejected load that the first backup covers costs a small rate difference; one that falls through every backup to the spot market costs the full market premium. Two lanes with the same primary acceptance can carry very different costs if one has strong backups and the other does not.

• Worked depth: on the example US lane, 260 loads were tendered in the quarter. The primary covered 198, the first backup 31, the second backup 12, and 19 went to spot. Treating spot as position 4, depth is (198 × 1 + 31 × 2 + 12 × 3 + 19 × 4) ÷ 260 = 372 ÷ 260 = 1.43.
• Primary acceptance: 198 of 260 offers, or 76.2%.
• First backup acceptance: 31 of 62 offers, or 50.0%, a poor backup for this lane.
• Second backup acceptance: 12 of 31 offers, or 38.7%.
• Event-based network acceptance: 241 accepted of 353 offers, or 68.3%, while load coverage inside the guide is 241 of 260, or 92.7%.

Spot leakage: putting a price on every rejected tender

Spot leakage cost is the extra paid for each load covered above the primary contract rate, summed over the period. It converts acceptance into money, which is the language a renewal decision needs.

Calculate the premium against the primary rate, not against the rate of whichever backup was skipped, so that every step down the guide shows its cost. Use invoiced linehaul and fuel, and keep accessorials out: they follow the shipment, not the tender. The figures below are illustrative; real rates vary by lane, season and contract.

The US lane is a 780-mile dry van run; the Indian lane is a 32-foot closed-body move from a Bhiwandi warehouse to Bengaluru. On both, spot freight is under a tenth of loads but carries 70 to 75 percent of the leakage. That pattern is common: improving the last backup or adding a dedicated option often saves more than renegotiating the primary.

Spot leakage on a truckload routing guide is the sum of each covered load's rate minus the primary contract rate; on the illustrative 780-mile lane, 19 spot loads at a $745 premium produced $14,155 of the quarter's $18,865, roughly 75 percent of leakage from 7.3 percent of loads.

Why carriers reject tenders: lead time, driver hours and price

Rejections have three main causes: the tender arrives too late for a legal driver plan, the carrier's network has no truck near the origin that day, or the contract rate is now below what the market pays. Only the last one is fixed by a rate change.

In the US, 49 CFR 395.3 limits a property-carrying driver to 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour window after 10 consecutive hours off duty, with a 30-minute break once 8 driving hours have passed. A 780-mile load offered four hours before pickup with next-morning delivery needs a team, because a single driver must stop for 10 hours on the way, whatever rate is offered.

• Lead-time rejections: tag offers made inside the agreed lead time; if they cluster, the fix is the shipper's order cut-off, not the carrier.
• Network rejections: a carrier with no trucks emptying near the origin will decline even at a good rate; balanced lanes and consistent volume reduce them.
• Price rejections: when the contract falls below the carrier's floor or the market rises, rejection climbs across all days; our truckload rate components guide explains that floor.
• Indian re-tender friction: under CGST rule 138(5A), the e-way bill can be assigned to another transporter to update Part B, so a declined indent adds an assignment step before the replacement vehicle can move.

Short-notice truckload tenders often fail on driver hours rather than price: 49 CFR 395.3(a)(3)(i) allows 11 driving hours within the 14-hour window, so a 780-mile load offered four hours before pickup for next-morning delivery needs a team, and carriers without one decline it whatever the rate.

Building a rejection index procurement can act on

A shipper's own rejection index compares current primary rejection with a fixed baseline period set to 100, by lane and week. It shows direction and speed of change, which raw percentages hide when volumes move.

Use primary rejection, including timeouts, as the input: it is the purest signal of whether contracted capacity is holding. If the baseline quarter's primary rejection was 8.0% and this week's is 14.0%, the index is 14.0 ÷ 8.0 × 100 = 175. Weight lanes by tendered loads when rolling up to a region, so a quiet lane cannot swing the total.

Public tender-rejection indices sold by freight data providers measure the whole market. Your index measures your contracts. When the market index rises and yours does not, your routing guide is holding; when yours rises alone, the problem is your rates, your lead times or a specific carrier. Any review threshold, such as an index above 150 for two weeks, is an internal policy, not an industry standard.

A failure week: the primary carrier stops accepting without notice

Acceptance falls quietly; nobody calls to say the contract rate no longer works. A weekly lane report catches it within days, while a quarterly review catches it after the money has gone.

The trace follows the illustrative US lane in week 38. Control numbers and times are invented for the example, but the sequence of offers, timeouts and waterfall moves is how a TMS records the pattern, and each step shows which record would have flagged it.

1. Mon 06:02: TMS sends 204 control number 000418 (purpose 00) to the primary carrier for load 55102; the two-hour window closes at 08:02 with no 990, so the status is set to timeout.
2. Mon 08:03: the tender advances to the first backup, which returns a 990 with B104 = D at 08:40; the second backup accepts at 09:15 at $2,310.
3. Tue to Thu: the same pattern repeats on 9 of 11 tenders; four loads reach spot at an average of $2,920, and the planners cover them without escalating.
4. Fri 15:00: the weekly report shows primary acceptance at 17% (2 of 12) against a 76% quarter average, and the lane's rejection index, set on a 20% baseline, jumps from 120 to 417.
5. Mon 10:00: the carrier manager reaches the carrier, which confirms its contract rate no longer covers the lane after a fuel and wage change; a mini-bid is opened the same day.

Scorecard and contract checklist for tender acceptance

Acceptance only improves when the contract defines it and the scorecard reports it on the contract's terms. Put the definitions in the award, report them monthly, and tie the review triggers to them.

For the full carrier review, our carrier performance scorecard guide separates acceptance from execution and delivery evidence. Choosing between routing-guide waterfalls and spot mini-bids in software is covered in our TMS routing guide and spot procurement comparison; this article supplies the measures those tools should report. More logistics guides sit on the Logistics and Supply Chain hub.

If you want tender events, timeouts, depth and leakage measured directly from your TMS and EDI traffic, with lane reviews opened automatically, you can send us your routing guide requirements. A sample of tender logs and a lane list is enough for us to scope it.