Why doesn’t tricargo publish the rates…?

rates. routes. and doing it differently.

"Why doesn’t tricargo show the rates?"

It's a fair question. And a common one.

After all, plenty of booking platforms do.

Search a route.

See a price.

Pick the cheapest.

Job done.

Except that's not how air cargo actually works.

And a conversation we had with a GSA this week perfectly explained why.

Their point was simple.

If a competitor can see your rates, they can see your strategy.

They know exactly where you're strong.

They know exactly where you're weak.

And they know exactly what number they need to beat.

But that's only part of the story.

Because the bigger issue is this:

The best solution is not always the cheapest solution.

In fact, it often isn't.

Air cargo and booking a hotel

If price was the only thing that mattered when booking a hotel, everyone would stay in the cheapest room available.

They don't.

They look at location.

Reliability.

Reviews.

Service.

What they actually need.

Air cargo is the same.

The rate matters.

It's just not the only thing that matters.

The rate is only part of the answer

A GSSA might look expensive on paper.

Then solve a problem nobody else can.

A GSSA might not have the lowest rate.

But they have capacity available today.

Or a better transit time.

Or a stronger airline relationship.

Or a local team that knows exactly how to handle the cargo.

Those things matter.

Sometimes they matter a lot more than a few cents per kilo.

Yet when you publish rates publicly, the conversation immediately becomes about one thing.

Price.

And once price becomes the only thing being compared, everyone loses.

The race to the bottom

Publish rates and eventually somebody goes lower.

Then somebody else goes lower again.

And before long the discussion isn't about service, expertise, reliability or relationships.

It's about who can afford to be cheapest.

That might work for commodities.

It doesn't work for partnerships.

And air cargo is still a relationship business.

The best GSSAs know that.

The best freight forwarders know that too.

So what does tricargo do?

We don't publish rates.

We publish visibility.

A freight forwarder searches.

Every eligible GSSA appears.

The forwarder decides who they want to speak to.

The enquiry is sent.

The conversation begins.

Then something important happens.

People talk.

Questions get asked.

Options get explored.

Solutions get built.

Exactly as they should.

Because the goal isn't to find the cheapest number.

The goal is to find the right partner and solution.

Price matters. It's just not everything.

Of course rates matter.

Nobody is pretending otherwise.

But air cargo has never been purely about rates.

It's about capability.

Capacity.

Relationships.

Trust.

Experience.

Problem-solving.

The rate is part of the conversation.

It shouldn't be the entire conversation.

That's why tricargo doesn't publish rates.

Because we're not trying to create a race to the bottom.

We're trying to create better introductions.

And sometimes the best solution isn't the cheapest one.

It's the one you didn't (yet) know existed.

Team tricargo

Neutral by design.