Platform/Excel Add-In

CARGADO ADD-IN FOR EXCEL

Price Mexico and Canada lanes in Excel, from real carrier bids

Market rates come back as formulas in your own bid file. Low, mid and high bands, a confidence score and a margin of error, sitting beside the lanes you are already quoting.

Get a demo See how to set it up

Included with a Cargado subscription. Your Microsoft 365 administrator installs it once for the whole company.

The Cargado Rates sheet in Excel: origin, destination, trailer type and crossing on the left, the rate band and confidence returned on the right.

SETTING IT UP

One install by your administrator, then a sign-in

The add-in is published on Microsoft AppSource. An administrator deploys it to your organization once, and it appears on the Home ribbon for everyone who needs it.

For your Microsoft 365 administrator

Get the add-in from Microsoft AppSource
Open the Cargado Add-in for Excel listing and choose Get it now.
Deploy it to your organization
Entire organization is the setting we recommend. Only people with a Cargado account can use the add-in, so a wide deployment does not open anything up.
Give it up to 24 hours
Microsoft can take that long to show a newly deployed add-in to every user. Forward the announcement email and the user guide to your team.

Step-by-step screenshots for each of these are in the installation guide.

For everyone else, the first time you open it

Click Show Cargado on the Home ribbon
On the single-line ribbon layout it sits inside the overflow menu. The Cargado task pane opens on the right.
Log in with your Cargado account
The same username and password you use in the web app. If Excel asks to display a new window, allow it.
Click Create sheets
That adds two sheets to the workbook: Cargado Mappings and Cargado Rates. Clicking it again overwrites them, so rename them first if you have edits worth keeping.

USING IT ON A BID FILE

Teach it your wording once, then fill down

Every RFP names trailer types and crossings differently. You reconcile that once per workbook, and the rest of the bid file is formulas.

Map your terms

In the Cargado Mappings sheet, put your spreadsheet's wording for each trailer type and border crossing next to Cargado's. A VLOOKUP translates them from then on. Leave a row blank for anything you do not run.

Try a single row

In the Cargado Rates sheet, fill in origin, destination, trailer type and, for a Mexico lane, the crossing. The mapped values appear to the right, and the rate result to the right of those, so you can see exactly what the lookup matched on.

Call the functions in your own sheet

Once the mapping is right, skip the Cargado Rates sheet and call the functions directly in the RFP tab. Fill down and the whole bid file prices itself.

WHAT COMES BACK

A band, and enough context to argue with it

Cargado returns the rate and the reasoning. You can see how confident the number is, how wide the error is, and which market, trailer category and crossing it matched, so a thin lane is obvious before you quote it.

The rate

Low, mid and high

The 25th, 50th and 75th percentile of what carriers have actually bid on the lane.

Per mile or all-in

Every band also comes as a rate per mile and as an all-in rate, so you can drop it straight into whichever column your bid sheet uses.

Recent history

A sparkline of the mid rate, drawn in text so it lives in a single cell and survives a copy-paste into someone else's workbook.

How much to trust it

Confidence

Strong, medium or lower, with the underlying score if you would rather set your own threshold.

Margin of error

In dollars and as a percentage of the rate. A wide margin on a lane you are about to commit to is the signal to go look at it.

What it matched on

Origin and destination market, whether each is a standard or extended market, trailer category, the crossing used and the route miles. Plus the recommended crossing when you are not sure which to quote.

Rates are built from carrier bids submitted on the Cargado marketplace, aggregated by origin and destination market, trailer type and border crossing. How the rate data works and how confidence scores are calculated cover the method in full.

FUNCTION REFERENCE

The formulas you can call

Every function takes the same arguments: origin, destination and trailer type, plus the border crossing where a Mexico lane needs one. Miles are optional; leave them out and Cargado works out the distance.

Suffixes shown below a function name are the other variants of it.
Function	What it returns
CARGADO.RATE_HISTORY_P25 _P50 · _P75	The low, mid and high rate for the lane.
CARGADO.RATE_HISTORY_PER_MILE_P25 _P50 · _P75	The same three bands expressed as a rate per mile.
CARGADO.RATE_HISTORY_ALL_IN_P25 _P50 · _P75	The same three bands as an all-in rate.
CARGADO.RATE_HISTORY_P50_SPARKLINE	The mid rate's history as a single text sparkline, so it fits in one cell.
CARGADO.RATE_CONFIDENCE	Strong, medium or lower.
CARGADO.RATE_CONFIDENCE_SCORE	The numeric score behind that label.
CARGADO.RATE_MARGIN_OF_ERROR	The margin of error in dollars.
CARGADO.RATE_RELATIVE_MARGIN_OF_ERROR	The margin of error as a percentage of the rate.
CARGADO.RATE_ORIGIN_MARKET_NAME RATE_DESTINATION_MARKET_NAME	The market Cargado matched each end of the lane to.
CARGADO.RATE_ORIGIN_MARKET_TYPE RATE_DESTINATION_MARKET_TYPE	Whether that market is a standard or an extended one.
CARGADO.RATE_ORIGIN_MARKET_CODE RATE_DESTINATION_MARKET_CODE	The market code, for joining back to your own data.
CARGADO.RATE_TRAILER_CATEGORY	The trailer category the rate was priced on.
CARGADO.RATE_BORDER_CROSSING	The crossing used in the lookup.
CARGADO.RECOMMENDED_BORDER_CROSSING	The crossing Cargado would recommend for the route and trailer type.
CARGADO.RATE_ROUTE_MILES	The route distance in miles.
CARGADO.RATE_CURRENCY_CODE	The currency the rate is quoted in.

The user guide lists every argument in full.

BEFORE YOU ROLL IT OUT

Two things worth knowing

Who can use it

A Cargado account is required

Deploying the add-in to your whole organization is safe, because signing in is what unlocks it. Anyone without a Cargado account sees the task pane and nothing else.

Built for the people answering RFPs

Pricing desks, carrier sales and anyone who lives in a bid file. It reads the same rates as the web app, so a number quoted in Excel matches the number quoted in Cargado.

How usage is counted

Lookups are metered

Each unique combination of function arguments counts once per week, however many times you recalculate it. Filling down a thousand-row RFP is a thousand lanes, not a thousand lookups of the same lane.

Quotas sit with your plan

If your team starts pushing past its rate lookup quota, someone from Cargado gets in touch rather than the formulas quietly failing.

Questions about the Excel Add-In

What brokers ask before rolling it out to a pricing desk.

Still have a question?

Our team can walk your pricing desk through the setup.

Do I need a Cargado subscription to use the Excel Add-In?

Yes. The add-in is included with a Cargado subscription, and signing in with a Cargado account is what unlocks it. That is why deploying it across your whole organization is safe: anyone without an account opens the task pane and gets nothing else.

Who installs it, me or my IT team?

A Microsoft 365 administrator installs it once from Microsoft AppSource and deploys it to your organization. Microsoft can take up to 24 hours to show a newly deployed add-in to everyone. After that you click Show Cargado on the Home ribbon and log in with your Cargado account.

Will it overwrite my bid file?

No. Create sheets adds two new sheets, Cargado Mappings and Cargado Rates, and leaves the rest of the workbook alone. Clicking it a second time does overwrite those two sheets, so rename them first if you have edits in them. You can also skip them entirely and call the functions in your own tab.

How is usage counted?

Each unique combination of function arguments counts as one lookup per week, however many times Excel recalculates it. Pricing a thousand different lanes is a thousand lookups; recalculating the same lane all afternoon is one. Quotas come with your plan, and if your team starts running past its quota someone from Cargado gets in touch.

Is it the same rate data as the Cargado web app?

Yes. The add-in reads the same market rates as Cargado in the browser, built from bids carriers submitted on the marketplace and aggregated by origin and destination market, trailer type and border crossing. A number you quote from a spreadsheet matches the number in the app.