Your benchmark covers U.S. domestic freight and goes quiet at both borders. Cargado prices Canada and Mexico lanes from real carrier bids, in low, mid and high bands, refreshed weekly. There is less Canada bidding behind our bands than Mexico, and the confidence score tells you that on every lane.
The most common objection we hear is that rate data only matters at bid time. In practice a procurement team prices freight in five different moments, and four of them are nowhere near the annual bid.
Think of this as market intelligence rather than a savings pitch. One thing to know before you compare: the bands are what carriers bid to move the freight, to the truck. A rate you pay a broker or forwarder normally sits above that, because it carries their margin and whatever services you have bought. Compare like for like, against your own baseline. We do not promise a savings number.
One thing worth saying plainly: shippers do not join the Cargado marketplace. It is brokers, forwarders and 3PLs on one side and vetted Mexico and Canada carriers on the other. You buy the rate data those two sides generate. We also do not post your lanes to go collect a rate for you.
Both directions, priced in dollars. This is where carrier bidding is heaviest, on corridors like Laredo–Monterrey and Guadalajara–Laredo.
Moves inside Mexico between plants, ports and the border, priced in pesos. Live, and still filling in, so read the confidence score before you lean on one of these.
Canada–U.S. cross-border is priced where carriers are bidding, in both directions. Be straight with yourself about the depth: there is less of it than Mexico, so read the confidence score before you lean on a single lane. We do not price U.S. domestic freight away from the border, and we do not cover moves inside Canada.
Every lane comes back as a low, mid and high band. Where your quote sits in that band is the answer, and which part of the band you should expect depends on how you're moving the freight.
A quote under the low end sits below what carriers have been bidding on that lane. Worth understanding why before you plan around it, because a rate well under the market usually reflects something specific about that load rather than the lane itself.
A quote near the middle is in line with the market. Committed volume with real lead time tends to sit toward the low end; short notice and tight pickup windows sit toward the high end.
A quote above the high end sits above the range carriers have been bidding on that lane. Usually there is a reason worth knowing: lead time, equipment, seasonality, or a lane that runs empty in one direction. Read it with the confidence score.
Read the confidence score with the band. It tells you how much carrier bidding sits behind that lane, and a thin lane gets a lower score rather than a made-up number. And lead time is the cheapest lever there is: freight moved as planned, committed volume consistently prices below the same freight covered in a hurry.
Follow one lane from a carrier's bid to the band you see.
Brokers and forwarders post real loads and lanes in Cargado's marketplace. Vetted Mexico and Canada carriers bid on them. Those bids are the benchmark — not a survey, not a scraped load board, not an invoice after the fact.
Each band covers a trailing 12 weeks and updates weekly. A benchmark rebuilt quarterly is describing a market that has already moved, which is the whole problem when rates are climbing.
Where a lane has carriers bidding on it, we price from those bids. Where it doesn't, we estimate the lane from bidding on its origin and destination markets. The confidence score on every lane tells you which one you are looking at.
Which one you want depends on where your team already prices freight. The mechanics of each live on the Market Rates page.
For the team that prices a bid round in a spreadsheet. The bands arrive next to your lanes, so a bid file stays a bid file.
See the Excel add-in →For the team with a TMS or a pricing engine of its own, so nobody opens a second system to see what a lane has been bidding at.
See the API →For the team already running procurement somewhere else. GoodShip carries Cargado bands natively today, and more platforms are in progress.
See all partnerships →What shippers ask about Cargado rate benchmarks
Our team is happy to talk through how the benchmarks fit your freight
Contact UsCargado subscriptions are value-based and scale with usage — from teams doing occasional rate lookups to enterprise plans with unlimited access — and every plan includes unlimited users. Talk to us to find the right fit for how your team buys freight.
Put real market context behind every rate conversation, spot and contract, built from carrier bidding across Mexico and Canada.
Tell us the Canada and Mexico lanes you are pricing. We will show you what the market looks like on them, and say plainly which of your lanes we have thin data on.