🎥 Video walkthrough: watch this step on YouTube. A short recorded demo of exactly these steps.
This article walks you through the Freight matching tab on a shipment. Use freight matching when you have an open load with no carrier assigned and you want to reach out to carriers from the polt.ai catalog, the Highway, MCP, RMIS network, or DAT to request a rate bid.
Table of contents
When to use this vs. assigning a carrier directly: If you already have a carrier in mind, use the Carrier section in the shipment editor to assign them directly. Freight matching is for when you need to source a new carrier — it pulls from a broader pool and lets you send a formal bid request by email.
The shipment must be created and saved in polt.ai with no carrier assigned. See How to create a shipment.
Confirm the shipment's origin, destination, equipment type, weight, and commodity are filled in — these pre-populate into the bid request automatically.
1. Open the shipment and go to the Freight matching tab
From the Shipments dashboard, click into the shipment. At the top of the record, click the Freight matching tab.
If no carrier matching has been started yet, you'll see an Additional carrier options prompt. Click Start carrier matching.
2. Browse carriers by source
Three sub-tabs appear across the top of the Freight matching section:
Highway — carriers sourced from the Highway network with assessment data
DAT — carriers from the DAT load board matching your lane and freight type
Each tab shows a list of carriers with columns: Carrier name, MC, DOT, In house carrier, In house carrier ID, Assessment status, Contact name, and Actions.
Use the Assessment status column to evaluate carrier quality before requesting a bid — Pass, Partial pass, and Unknown indicate the carrier's Highway vetting result.
Tip: Start with the polt.ai tab to check your in-house carrier catalog first. Move to Highway or DAT if you need a broader pool.
3. Click Request bid on your chosen carrier
Find the carrier you want to reach out to and click Request bid in the Actions column. The Request bid dialog opens with shipment details pre-filled.
4. Confirm the carrier and shipment details
The first screen of the dialog shows:
Carriers — the carrier's contact email auto-populates from their record. You can add additional email addresses (comma separated) or remove the pre-filled one if needed.
Origin and Destination — pre-filled from the shipment
Pick-up date — pre-filled from the shipment. Add Pick-up time, Drop-off date, and Drop-off time if known.
Equipment type and Weight — pre-filled from the shipment
Footage — confirm or enter the footage for this load
Commodity — pre-filled from the shipment
Scroll down to continue.
5. Set rate, requirements, and bid handling
On the lower half of the dialog:
Rate — enter your target rate if you want to include it in the request, or leave at $0.00 to let the carrier name their price
Tracking required — check this box (recommended for most loads)
Contains hazardous materials — check if applicable
Comment — add any additional instructions or context for the carrier
Bid handling — important:
⚠️ Select Manual. Under Bid handling, always select Manual — you'll handle communication and negotiations with the carrier directly via email. The AI-assisted option is not yet live and selecting it will not work as expected.
Click Next.
6. Review and send the bid request
The Review and request screen shows a summary of everything that will be sent to the carrier — carrier email, origin, destination, pick-up date, equipment type, commodity, footage, weight, tracking requirement, and bid handling method.
Review carefully. If anything needs to change, click Back to edit.
When ready, click Request to send the bid.
What happens next
The carrier receives an email from your polt.ai login email address with the load details and an offer expiration of 12 hours.
You can communicate back and forth with the carrier via email directly from that thread — no need to go back into polt.ai to manage the conversation.
Once the carrier responds with a rate you want to accept, assign them to the shipment.