One of the most common reasons companies delay switching logistics providers, even when they know they should, is that they don’t know what the transition actually looks like. How long does it take? What do they need to provide? Will there be a gap in their freight coverage?
This post answers those questions specifically for R2 Logistics, so you know exactly what to expect before you reach out.
Step 1: The Initial Quote Request
When you request a quote, you’ll hear from an R2 account representative within one business day, typically faster. The first conversation isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a discovery call: we need to understand your freight profile before we can give you pricing that’s actually useful.
What we’ll ask about:
- Your primary shipping lanes — origin/destination pairs and approximate frequency
- Freight type, dimensions, and weight ranges
- Any special requirements: temperature control, hazmat, residential delivery, oversized freight
- Current pain points with your existing carrier or 3PL arrangement
- Timeline — are you looking to transition immediately or planning for a future date?
Step 2: Rate Development
Based on your freight profile, we build a rate proposal against your actual lanes using our contracted carrier rates. This is not a generic estimate. It’s carrier-specific pricing for your specific origin-destination pairs.
For LTL, we’ll include accessorials based on your delivery requirements. For FTL and specialized freight, we’ll pull current market rates from our carrier network. This typically takes 1–3 business days depending on the complexity of your freight program.
Step 3: The Rate Review
We walk through the proposal with you on a call. This is where we compare rates to what you’re currently paying, address any questions about freight class or accessorial assumptions, and talk through lane coverage.
If there are lanes where we’re not competitive, we’ll tell you. We’d rather lose a lane than win it and underperform.
Step 4: Contract and Setup
Once you’re ready to move forward, we set up your account in our TMS, establish carrier preferences for your key lanes, and get your billing and documentation preferences in place. Most account setups are complete within 3–5 business days of agreement.
There’s no freight gap during setup; we don’t require you to stop shipping with your current provider before your R2 account is live.
Step 5: First Shipments
We typically recommend starting with a subset of your freight, often your highest-volume lanes or your most problematic routes, so you can evaluate performance before transitioning everything. This isn’t a requirement, but it’s how most successful transitions work.
Your account manager is your primary contact for any issues during the first shipments. We pay close attention to early shipments because that’s when any setup issues surface and when we establish the patterns that will carry the relationship forward.
What You’ll Have Access to From Day One
- Real-time shipment tracking through our TMS portal
- Direct access to your account manager via email and phone
- Transparent billing with itemized accessorials
- Claims support — we manage claims on your behalf
- Regular reporting on transit performance and spend
How Long Does the Full Transition Take?
For a straightforward LTL program: a quote for the first shipment in 1–2 weeks. For a more complex freight program with multiple modes and specialized requirements: 2–4 weeks. For a full transition from an existing 3PL with contract considerations, we’ll work on your timeline.
The biggest variable is usually on your end — how quickly you can provide freight data and how complex your approval process is internally. We can move as fast as you need to.
What to Have Ready When You Reach Out
- A lane list with your top 5–10 origin-destination pairs
- Freight class for your primary commodities (or commodity descriptions we can classify)
- Approximate monthly shipment volume
- Any current rate sheets you want us to compare against
That’s enough to get started. We’ll ask for more detail as the process goes on, but you don’t need to have everything prepared before your first call.
Ready to start the conversation? Request a quote and an R2 account representative will be in touch within one business day. Get a quote.