Primary carrier
The primary carrier is the carrier or broker awarded first position on a lane in the routing guide: it sees every tender first and is expected to accept most of them at the awarded rate. Losing primary status often means the rate no longer matched the market.
Primary carrier is a position, not a company type. After a bid event, the shipper names one provider first on each lane in the routing guide; that provider is the primary. It receives every tender first, is measured on tender acceptance, and is expected to carry the lane's forecast volume at the awarded rate for the validity period. Brokers can hold primary as easily as asset carriers, and on cross-border lanes often do, because covering both sides of the border and the crossing is the hard part.
What this means when you move freight
Primary status is earned on price and kept on acceptance. The shipper's forecast rarely matches the actual volume, so a primary should expect surges and dry weeks and price the lane for both. On Mexico lanes, hold the primary position with a real carrier base on both legs, and with a plan for the crossing, because a primary that rejects tenders when the border backs up loses the lane to the backup. Before bidding for primary, compare your number against the current market rate and decide which side of the spread you can live on for the whole term; a primary award you cannot service is worse than a backup position you can.
Put the vocabulary to work
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