What to put in an RFQ to a 3PL

The volume profile: give a range, not a guess dressed as a fact

A 3PL prices storage, labor, and equipment against your volume, and it prices them against the shape of that volume, not just the annual total. State the annual throughput, the monthly split showing seasonality, and the peak week separately from the peak month, because a provider staffs and slots a warehouse for the worst week it will see, not the average one.

Worked example, rendered as prose rather than a table: a mid-sized packhouse ships 18,000 pallets a year. January through April run close to flat at roughly 900 pallets a month. May through August, the harvest season, carry 60 percent of annual volume, peaking at 4,200 pallets in the single highest week of July. September through December fall back to 700 to 1,100 pallets a month. The order profile behind that volume is 40 outbound orders a week in the off-season rising to 260 a week at peak, averaging 6 line items per order with a low of 2 and a high of 30 for consolidated retail orders. That is a usable volume profile: a provider reading it can size labor and slot capacity for July without asking a follow-up question.

The single most expensive mistake in this section is submitting a confident single number that turns out wrong once contracted. If your July peak could be 3,000 pallets or it could be 4,500 depending on a harvest that has not happened yet, say that range and say why, rather than picking the middle and presenting it as certain. A provider who prices to a false certainty either builds in a margin cushion you pay for every month, or prices tight and then hits you with peak-season accessorials when the real number lands outside the range they assumed. A stated range they can plan contingency capacity against is cheaper for you across the contract than a wrong point estimate.

The product profile: what makes your freight different to handle

Temperature class drives both the facility a provider can even offer and the rate card that applies to it: ambient, chilled, frozen, or a mixed profile that needs multiple zones under one roof. State it per SKU family if it varies, not as one blanket answer, because a provider sizing a chilled dock for a shipper who is actually 80 percent frozen will misquote the facility fit.

Handling constraints belong here too: pallet configuration and stacking limits, whether product is fragile or crush-sensitive, whether it needs humidity control distinct from temperature, and any hazard classification that changes storage segregation rules. Shelf life matters on its own line, separate from temperature class, because a provider running FIFO on a 90-day shelf-life product needs different pick logic and inventory turnover discipline than one running a 400-day shelf-life staple, even at the same temperature and volume.

Batch and lot requirements close this section: whether you need full lot traceability through the warehouse management system, whether recalls have to trace to pallet level or case level, and whether any customer or regulator (a retailer's own vendor manual, or a food safety authority's traceability rule) sets a minimum standard you must meet regardless of what the 3PL's default system supports. A provider whose WMS cannot track at case level should be able to see that requirement and decline early rather than discover the gap during onboarding.

The service requirement: hours, cut-offs, and what happens on returns

Receiving hours and appointment windows, order cut-off times for same-day or next-day dispatch, and the dispatch windows themselves all set the labor shift pattern a provider has to staff against, which is a direct input to their quoted rate. A facility that has to hold a receiving dock open until 8pm to match your inbound schedule prices differently than one closing at 5pm, and that difference should be visible in the RFQ, not discovered after award.

State your order cut-off precisely, for example orders placed by 2pm local time ship same day, and be explicit about what happens to an order that misses cut-off: does it roll to the next dispatch window automatically, or does it require a manual exception request. Ambiguity here is where SLA disputes start, because the provider's operational default and your expectation are rarely the same until you have written it down.

Returns handling is frequently left out of the RFQ entirely and then negotiated from a weaker position after award. State expected return volume as a percentage of outbound, what inspection or grading returned product needs before it can be re-slotted as sellable inventory, and whether returns get a separate SLA clock from outbound orders. A provider who is asked to quote returns handling for the first time mid-contract will price it defensively.

Systems and compliance: the requirements a provider can fail silently

The systems requirement should state what integration you need, not just that you need one: EDI transaction sets if you use them, an API for inventory visibility, or a portal login being an acceptable minimum for a smaller shipper. State whether you need real-time inventory visibility or a daily batch feed is sufficient, because that distinction changes which providers' existing WMS setup can meet it without custom development, and custom development shows up in your onboarding timeline and sometimes your rate.

Compliance requirements depend heavily on your commodity and destination market, so name the specific standard rather than a generic reference to food safety. If your product needs a facility certified against a recognized food safety scheme, such as one benchmarked under the Global Food Safety Initiative, or a facility registered with the destination country's food safety authority, state that as a pass or fail gate in the RFQ rather than a preference, so a provider without that certification can decline before spending time on a proposal. If your product carries an organic, halal, or kosher claim that depends on segregated storage or a chain of custody through the warehouse, state that as its own requirement, because it is an operational constraint on the facility, not paperwork that happens elsewhere.

Insurance and liability terms belong in the RFQ too, at minimum the cargo insurance coverage level you require and who holds liability for a discrepancy between received and putaway quantities. Leaving this for the contract stage after a provider is already selected removes your ability to compare it across bidders.

The pricing basis: ask every bidder to quote the same units

Incomparable quotes are, more often than any other single cause, the result of an RFQ that let each provider choose their own pricing structure. One 3PL quotes storage per pallet position per month, another per square foot per month, a third bundles storage into a per-case throughput rate. All three can be legitimate pricing models and none of them can be compared to each other without conversion work that introduces its own error.

Specify the units you want quoted: storage as a rate per pallet position per month, inbound handling as a rate per pallet or per case received, outbound handling as a rate per order and a rate per line pick, and any value-added services such as labeling or repack quoted per unit of work. Ask for minimum monthly commitments and any tiered volume breaks to be shown explicitly rather than folded into a single blended number, because a blended number hides which volume assumption it was built on.

Ask specifically for the accessorial list: what triggers a peak-season surcharge, what a missed appointment or detention charge costs, and what a rate card review clause looks like if your actual volume lands materially outside the profile you submitted. A provider who will not itemize accessorials in the RFQ response is telling you those charges are where their real margin sits.

The SLA and penalty framework, and letting a provider say no early

Define the service levels you will hold the provider to and how each is measured: order accuracy rate, on-time dispatch rate against your stated cut-off, inventory accuracy from cycle counts, and claims or damage rate. State the measurement period and the remedy if a threshold is missed, whether that is a credit against the invoice, a corrective action plan with a defined timeline, or in a repeated-failure case a termination right. A provider who cannot commit to a stated SLA on paper is telling you something worth knowing before award, not after the first missed peak week.

The most efficient thing you can build into the RFQ is a way for a provider to decline quickly and honestly. List your hard requirements, minimum facility footprint, required temperature zones, required certification, required systems integration, as a short qualifying section near the top, separate from the narrative. A provider who does not meet a hard requirement can say so in a paragraph and save both sides the two to three weeks a full proposal cycle otherwise takes. The RFQs that generate the most wasted effort on both sides are the ones where a provider only discovers a disqualifying gap, a missing certification or an unsupported temperature class, deep into contract negotiation, after both sides have already invested real time assuming the deal would close.