Managed shipping RFP template: 27 questions to ask every vendor

By Brett Haskins  |  Published June 5, 2026

If you’re running an RFP for a managed shipping or multi-carrier TMS partner, the right questions matter more than the right pitch. Below are 27 questions iDrive Logistics thinks every buyer should ask — including iDrive. Copy them into your RFP, score every vendor on each, and the right partner will fall out of the math. For background on the category itself, see the managed shipping pillar and what is managed shipping.

How to use this template

The mechanics:

• The 27 questions are grouped into six categories.
• Score each on a 1–5 scale, weighted by what matters most to your business.
• The right vendor is rarely the highest aggregate scorer — it’s the one whose strengths align with your top three weighted dimensions.

A practical example: if your shipping is 25% of order value (food and beverage is often here), audit accuracy and rate access matter more than UI polish. Weight accordingly. If you ship across 20 zones with a complex SKU mix, regional carrier depth matters more than enterprise integrations.

Carrier contracts (5 questions)

• Do you own the carrier contracts directly, or are these brokered/resold rates?
• How many national carriers do you maintain direct contracts with?
• How many regional carriers, and which ones — OnTrac, GLS, SpeedX, DoorDash, OSM Worldwide, others?
• What aggregate volume are your contracts negotiated against?
• Do your contracts sit alongside our existing direct carrier accounts, or do we have to move volume?

iDrive’s transparent answer: Owned, not brokered. 12+ direct carrier contracts spanning UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL eCommerce, DHL Express, Amazon Logistics, GLS, OnTrac, SpeedX, DoorDash/DashLink, OSM Worldwide, plus international through partners. Aggregated against $5B+ in managed transportation spend. Contracts sit alongside your existing direct accounts; the TMS rate-shops across both.

Rate shopping and TMS (5 questions)

• How does the rate-shopping engine work — what inputs does it consider per shipment?
• Can we configure business rules — carrier exclusions, service-level minimums, brand requirements?
• How is the TMS deployed — your platform, our platform, both?
• Do you support same-day cartonization recommendations and DIM mitigation?
• What does integration with our existing WMS / OMS / ShipStation look like?

The “inputs the engine considers” question is the one most vendors skim past. The right answer is concrete: zone, weight, dimensions (and DIM math), service-level requirement, business rules, carrier capacity, recent performance, and current surcharges. If the answer is vague, the engine probably is too. For the long version of how this should work, see how multi-carrier rate shopping works.

Invoice auditing (4 questions)

• Do you audit carrier invoices? If yes, how many audit points?
• What’s the typical first-year recovery for a client of our size?
• Is reconciliation included or priced separately?
• Do we get package-level detail (PLD) reporting in the dashboard?

iDrive’s transparent answer: Yes — a 47-point audit. Typical recovery for clients at scale is $250K+ annually. Reconciliation is included; PLD reporting is available through our API connections.

The number to push every vendor on is question 12 — typical first-year recovery for a client of your size. Vague answers (“varies by client”) usually mean “we don’t actually know,” which usually means the audit isn’t producing the dollars they want you to think it is.

Support model (4 questions)

• What does day-to-day support look like — Slack, ticketing, named account manager?
• What’s the SLA for issue response?
• Who handles claims — your team or ours?
• How do you handle GRI cycles — proactive modeling or reactive?

iDrive’s transparent answer: Slack-based support with named account managers — both GA. Same-day response commitment. Claims management handled by the partner team. GRI strategy is proactive — the team models the brand-specific impact pre-effective-date and adjusts business rules.

The split between “Slack with named team” and “ticket queue with rotating support” is structural. Question 15 is usually the answer that tells you which model you’re really buying. For the GRI mechanics specifically, see how managed shipping absorbs GRI increases

Commercials (5 questions)

• What’s the cost structure — licensing fee, % of savings, transaction fee, hybrid?
• Are there minimum volume commitments?
• Are there termination provisions and data portability commitments?
• Do you take a markup on carrier rates? If yes, how much, and is it disclosed in PLD?
• What does pricing look like at our trailing 12-month volume?

Question 22 is the one most buyers forget to ask. Some vendors take an undisclosed markup on carrier rates that erodes the savings rate they pitched. PLD disclosure is the cleanest way to verify.

Question 23 is the one most vendors hate. They want to talk pricing in averages and benchmarks; you want a real number against your real volume. Push on this one.

Implementation and references (4 questions)

• What does onboarding look like — timeline, milestones, our team’s required involvement?
• Can you provide three references at our volume tier in our industry?
• Can you walk us through a recent client onboarding from contract to first label?
• What’s the customer retention rate?

iDrive’s transparent answer: Onboarding is typically weeks, not months. Discovery analysis runs in parallel with technical integration. References available on request, vetted to your volume and industry. Customer retention rate is 85%.

Question 27 is the cleanest leading indicator of customer satisfaction. Vendors with retention rates much below 80% usually have something else going on — pricing surprises, service drops, or a sales motion that overpromises. Ask.

How to score the responses

A short framework that takes about an hour:

• Define what 1 and 5 look like for each question. “Do you own the carrier contracts?” — 5 = direct contracts with all major carriers; 1 = brokered or resold rates only. “How many regional carriers?” — 5 = 5+ regionals named with direct contracts; 1 = none.
• Weight each question by your business reality. Top three weighted dimensions usually drive the decision. Pick them deliberately rather than letting the spreadsheet pick.
• Don’t pick on aggregate score alone. The right vendor is the one whose top three categories match your top three weights. A vendor that scores 4.0 average but 5.0 on your top three beats a vendor that scores 4.2 average but 3.0 on your top three.

If you want the layer above this — the buyer-fit framework that informs which dimensions you should weight — see the ROI of managed shipping and the buyer-fit section of our guide to managed shipping.

What’s not in the RFP that matters anyway

A few things buyers should ask in conversation, not in writing. Vendors give honest answers verbally that they won’t put in a written response.

• How does the partner talk about competitors? Bashing competitors is a yellow flag — it usually means the partner doesn’t have a strong enough story on their own.
• Does the team understand our specific shipping profile, or default to generic frameworks? Listen for whether they ask about your zone distribution, package mix, and seasonality before they pitch.
• Will the named account manager who pitches us actually be on our account post-signature? This is the question that catches most vendors off-guard. The answer reveals whether the relationship is real or staffed for the sale.

Download the template

A clean Google Doc version of these 27 questions is available for download — copy it directly into your RFP and adapt the weighting to your business.

Download it here.

Next step

If you’ve already started an RFP and want a transparent vendor walking you through the answers, send it our way. We’ll answer all 27 — including the awkward ones.

Send us the RFP — we’ll answer all 27.