Intelligent Pricing in the Transport Sector with Web Scraping

The logistics and transportation sector is highly fragmented and competitive. Freight price variation is constant and depends on thousands of routes. Understanding how the competition is pricing their deliveries is the key to operational success.

The Problem of Manual Quoting

Our client, one of the largest logistics operators in Brazil, based its competitiveness analyses on manual queries. The pricing team had to visit the websites of various competitors daily to quote freight prices and delivery times across thousands of zip codes. The process was slow, costly, and the data was already outdated by the time the analysis was completed.

Large-Scale Automation via Web Scraping

DataShift developed a robust Web Scraping architecture to completely automate this market intelligence workflow. The solution involved:

• Collection Bots: Automated bots that simulate real freight quotes on different carrier websites, covering over 50,000 routes (origin x destination).
• Deduplication and Cleaning: Rigorous processing to normalize data, handling different service nomenclatures (e.g., "Express Freight" vs. "Fast Delivery").
• Strategic Dashboard: Delivery of consolidated data directly into an analytical dashboard in the client's PowerBI.

The Business Impact

With the tool, the client stopped manually querying routes. The results were immediate:

1. Operational Efficiency: Over 800 hours of manual labor were saved per month.
2. Optimized Margins: The client identified routes where they were the cheapest in the market, allowing for a slight price adjustment without losing competitiveness.
3. Churn Reduction: On routes where they were losing to the competition due to inflated delivery times, they were able to renegotiate contracts with local suppliers.

"DS developed the delivery time query for our competitors. By obtaining fast and assertive information, we completely redefined our service level."

— Client's Pricing Manager

Conclusion

Modern Web Scraping goes beyond just capturing data; it enables Dynamic Pricing. By having instant market visibility, transportation companies ensure they are never leaving money on the table.