It was a regular Thursday until everything broke. Small freight brokers across the country were knee-deep in active shipments. Phones were buzzing, trucks were rolling, and rates were flying. Then it happened—their beloved SaaS quoting tool crashed.
TLDR: When a cloud-based quoting tool suddenly went down, small freight brokers had to react fast. They leaned on old-school tactics, teamwork, and created a manual backup process overnight. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. Here’s the step-by-step recovery workflow that saved their operations—plus what they did to never face it again.
What Really Happened
Most small brokers rely on cloud-based tools to quote freight. These tools compare prices, check capacity, and send offers in seconds. When this tool crashed mid-shipment cycle, chaos followed.
No quotes. No tracking. No automated emails. Just phone calls, panicked clients, and driver check-ins the old-fashioned way.
It felt like 1999 again—but with more coffee and Slack messages.
The Immediate Panic Mode
Let’s paint the picture:
- Your quoting SaaS is down.
- You’ve got 25 active shipments.
- Your email is flooded with rate requests.
- Your client wants to beat a competitor’s quote—in the next 10 minutes.
Most brokers froze for a moment… then jumped into action.
Step 1: Revert to Manual Rate Tracking
First, brokers reopened their old go-to: spreadsheets. Yep, the mighty Excel. Thankfully, many had old rate history saved.
They quickly:
- Pulled recent rates by lane.
- Phoned regular carriers to check current costs.
- Estimated quotes using average prices and fuel trends.
It wasn’t scientific. But it was reliable enough to keep freight moving.
“I never thought I’d be building a pivot table at 7:30 a.m. to quote a California to Ohio load,” said Jenna, a broker based in Tulsa.
Step 2: Round Up the Carrier Rolodex
With no digital lane matching, brokers relied on their carrier network—the human kind.
They:
- Called carriers directly.
- Used group texts and email blasts.
- Offered quick pay or bonuses to regulars for faster commitments.
This old-fashioned hustle was slower, but it got the job done. Relationships mattered more than ever.
Step 3: Keep Clients in the Loop (and Calm!)
Clients hate silence. So small brokers made communication their top priority.
Strategies that worked:
- Sending update emails every two hours.
- Manually editing quotes as PDFs and emailing them out.
- Using simple messaging apps like WhatsApp or Slack to reply faster.
Transparency, not perfection, was the goal.
Step 4: Use New Tools and Old Tricks
Some tools didn’t go down. Brokers quickly leaned on them:
- Google Sheets: For live team collaboration.
- Canva: To mock up quote PDFs fast.
- Maps + Fuel Index websites: To estimate transit & fuel costs.
Meanwhile, team leads divided lanes and markets amongst their teams like a war room. Everyone had a job—and none of it relied on the dead system.
Step 5: Create a Temporary “Mini System”
This is where things got smart. In just a few hours, one 5-person brokerage built a simplified backup “system”. It included:
- A shared Google Sheet with tabs for live rates, carrier status, and booked shipments.
- Color codes: Green (Quoted), Yellow (Pending), Red (Need Follow-Up).
- A shared Google Drive folder with template PDFs for quotes and invoices.
- A Slack channel #carrier-lane-match for real-time help between reps.
Was it pretty? Not quite. Did it work? Absolutely.
Step 6: Debrief and Build the Post-Mortem Playbook
Once systems were back online, smart brokers didn’t just go back to normal. They documented everything.
They built their own recovery workflow:
- Contact List: Key carriers, software reps, and major clients ready to reach out to instantly.
- Manual Quote Template: A well-designed PDF that mirrors their usual system.
- Spreadsheet Rate Tracker: With formulas for lane average, margin, and projected transit.
- Master Communication Plan: Email templates, group chat protocols, urgency statuses.
This “crash kit” now lives in the cloud—separate from their existing SaaS. Smart move, right?
Lessons Learned (And Shared)
The crash was chaotic—but it taught small brokers a few priceless lessons:
- You can’t rely 100% on software.
- Your team and your hustle are your real edge.
- Backups aren’t nerdy—they’re necessary.
- Old-school still works, if you know how to use it.
One broker even printed out their crash plan, laminated it, and taped it to their office wall. When the next outage hits, they’re ready.
Future Proofing: What They Changed
After the dust settled, here’s what many brokers did next:
- Added second SaaS tools as backups—even free or open source ones.
- Trained junior staff on quoting via spreadsheets, not just the tool UX.
- Created onboarding docs for emergency workflows.
- Built stronger relationships with their carriers—less platform, more phone calls.
These aren’t just panic moves. They’re smart business tactics.
Final Thoughts
The crash may have slowed them down. But it also woke them up. When systems failed, small brokers didn’t flinch for long. They got creative. They got scrappy. They got results.
They proved something important: Tech is great—but grit is better.
And if your quoting tool ever crashes? Take a deep breath. Fire up that spreadsheet. Pick up the phone. You’ve got this.
