Diwali is in November this year, which makes October the month everyone rushes stock out the door. So the trucks are busy. The Kharif harvest is moving at the same time, so now the trucks are very busy.
And while the trucks were busy, finance closed the half-year books. Somewhere, someone is looking at September’s freight bill right now. Probably frowning.
That frown is what this issue is about: what the peak is quietly costing you, and what’s worth fixing once things slow down in November.
Let’s get into it.
Freddie Foxwell
Right now, truck rentals are higher than last year on every major trunk route in Shriram Finance’s latest bulletin.
That’s normal for peak season. So is what usually follows. Diwali passes, trucks start hunting for loads, and rates ease.
Here’s the part nobody likes hearing. Lower rates don’t reach you on their own. Your transporters won’t call to offer a discount.
Nobody calls a fox to say dinner just got cheaper, either. You go and sniff it out yourself.
It’s an easy step to skip. A freight RFQ usually means weeks of calls, emails and spreadsheets, so renewing last year’s rates feels like the sensible shortcut. That’s how a peak-season price ends up running your lanes all year.
FreightFox cuts that RFQ from weeks to days. You invite your own transporters, collect quotes through Excel or the portal, and compare them lane by lane on rate, transit time and SLAs. You also see how many transporters are bidding on each lane and how far apart their prices are, so you know exactly where to push.
This month’s term: logistics control tower.
Ask a logistics head where a truck is, and they’ll find out in a few minutes. One call to the transporter, done.
Ask which of today’s trucks need attention, and the answer usually arrives later, from someone else. The plant, when the raw material hasn’t shown up. The customer, when the delivery slot has already passed.
A logistics control tower closes that gap. It checks every trip against its plan, meaning the expected arrival, the SLA and the unloading slot, and flags the ones going off course early. Your team still makes the calls. The control tower just tells you which calls to make first.
It’s how my nose works, really. I don’t sniff every tree in the forest. I go straight to the one that smells wrong.
It also catches something plain tracking misses. When a truck gets stuck for a day, its e-way bill keeps ticking. Validity is fixed by distance, one day for every 200 km or part of it, for regular cargo. Once it runs out, an extension is allowed only within eight hours of expiry, under Rule 138(10) of the CGST Rules. A control tower flags it while there’s still time.
Remember those 141.53 million e-way bills? This is where a few of them expire without anyone noticing.
FreightFox is a full-stack TMS and Control Tower platform that helps enterprises streamline freight procurement, execution, visibility, settlement, and sustainability—from Procure-to-Pay
