Nothing to paste? — an incumbent dry-van carrier asking for a rate change wrapped in a steeper fuel-surcharge schedule, tender acceptance slipping on the biggest lane, early financial-distress signals, and a broker pushing to shift the volume to spot. Or , rendered from a saved reply with no run and no charge.
Paste the record, not a summary
The scorecard table, the rate proposal, the FSC schedule, the emails. If you know the metrics and the rates, enter those too — the calculator runs in your browser, free, no sign-in. Pastes over 40,000 characters are cut from the middle, keeping the header and the live pressure at the end, with the gap announced in-band.
Enter both fuel schedules
The current base, trigger and step, and the proposed ones. The calculator prices both at $3.50, $4.00, $4.50 and at your own posted diesel price, finds the diesel price where the two cross, and annualizes the gap over your weekly miles. That is how a four-cent linehaul “reduction” that costs six figures a year gets caught.
Say what you can afford to lose
A lane you cannot fail in peak season and a lane you can rebid next month owe different answers, and so do a 40-carrier portfolio and a 4-carrier one. The decision you need changes the answer, and the verdict says so.
Read the next moves, then take them with you
The scenario and the risk are argued from the page, the numbers show their arithmetic, the scorecard is read against the desk's own bands, and every watch item carries the threshold that trips it. Copy the recommendation for a slide, export the watch items as CSV, or download the whole assessment.
Run it again when the carrier answers
Every run is kept on your SkillSafe account, not just in this browser. Work the same carrier a second time and the assessment leads with what moved — risk, recommended action, confidence and the weighted scorecard, each against the previous run.
Questions this desk gets asked
Can a lower linehaul rate actually cost more?
Routinely. A fuel surcharge is a step function: a schedule with a lower trigger and a steeper step per $0.05 of diesel adds more per mile at every realistic fuel price than the one it replaces. Four cents off the base against an extra half-cent per step is a net increase everywhere above the crossover price. Enter both schedules and the browser prices them side by side at $3.50, $4.00, $4.50 and your own posted diesel price, reports the crossover, and annualizes the difference over your weekly miles - no sign-in and no charge.
Is one bad month enough to exit a carrier?
No, and the calculator refuses to say it is. This desk's exit thresholds are duration-qualified - on-time delivery below 85% for 60 days, tender acceptance below 70% for 30 days with no communication, claims above 2% of spend for 90 days, invoice accuracy below 88% for 90 days after notice - so a single reading at that level is reported as a corrective-action trigger, not as an exit. Paste the whole column of monthly figures and the trend and the consecutive-period count are computed for you.
How much of a lane should one carrier hold?
This desk caps any one carrier at 40% of a critical lane and treats anything above 50% as an escalation: qualify a second carrier inside two weeks. Keep at least three active carriers on top lanes. Enter the carrier's weekly loads and the lane's total and the share is computed against both caps in your browser.
What are the scorecard bands?
On-time delivery targets 95% and red-flags below 90%; tender acceptance targets 90% for a primary and red-flags below 80%; claims ratio targets under 0.5% of spend and red-flags above 1.0%; invoice accuracy targets 97% and red-flags below 93%. The weighted composite runs on-time delivery 35, tender acceptance 25, claims 20, invoice accuracy 20. All of it is computed in the browser, free.
What costs money and what does not?
The scorecard, fuel-surcharge, contract-versus-spot and lane-concentration arithmetic all run locally and cost nothing, with no sign-in. Only working the decision with the model is metered, and the reserve is shown before you press the button; you pay what the run actually uses, not the reserve. If the balance is short, the button is disabled with the shortfall named rather than failing after you submit.