How quoting works

Overview

When you request a quote through Transdirect — whether via the API, a plugin, or the website — we send your shipment details to multiple courier partners simultaneously and return the best available rates.

Each quote includes:

• Price — the total cost including any applicable fees
• Transit time — estimated delivery timeframe
• Service type — road, air, or express
• Pickup dates — available dates for collection
• Pickup window — the time range for collection

What you need for a quote

At minimum, a quote request requires:

Field	Description	Example
Sender postcode	Pickup location postcode	2000
Sender suburb	Pickup suburb	SYDNEY
Receiver postcode	Delivery location postcode	3000
Receiver suburb	Delivery suburb	MELBOURNE
Items	At least one item with weight and dimensions	See below

Item details

Each item in a shipment needs:

Field	Description	Unit
weight	Item weight	Kilograms (kg)
height	Item height	Centimetres (cm)
width	Item width	Centimetres (cm)
length	Item length	Centimetres (cm)
quantity	Number of identical items	Integer
description	Package type	carton, satchel, pallet, etc.

Caution

Items exceeding 25kg must be securely packaged on a forklift-able skid, pallet, or crate. If you don’t have a forklift at the pickup or delivery address, you must request a tailgate service — additional surcharges will apply.

How quotes are returned

A quote response contains pricing from every available courier for your route. Each courier quote includes:

{
  "allied": {
    "total": 79.24,
    "price_insurance_ex": 72.09,
    "fee": 7.15,
    "insured_amount": 4500,
    "service": "road",
    "transit_time": "1-2 days",
    "pickup_dates": ["2025-08-27", "2025-08-28"],
    "pickup_time": {
      "from": "14:00",
      "to": "18:00"
    }
  }
}

Field	Description
total	Total price including fees (AUD, GST-inclusive)
price_insurance_ex	Carrier price excluding the warranty fee (AUD, GST-inclusive)
fee	Warranty fee component (AUD)
insured_amount	Insured value for that quote (AUD)
service	Service type (road, air)
transit_time	Estimated delivery timeframe
pickup_dates	Available pickup dates
pickup_time	Pickup time window

Frequent rates and tiers

Some couriers (Couriers Please, Aramex) offer frequent rates — discounted pricing for members who ship regularly. When available, the quote response includes a tiers array:

{
  "couriers_please": {
    "total": 11.03,
    "service": "road",
    "transit_time": "0-1 Business Days",
    "tiers": [
      {
        "identifier": 1,
        "description": "Multipickup 10",
        "total": 6.96
      },
      {
        "identifier": 2,
        "description": "Multipickup 21",
        "total": 5.75
      }
    ]
  }
}

Learn more about frequent rates.

Not every carrier answers: check quote_errors

A quote response is a snapshot of the carriers that replied, not a guarantee that every carrier was asked and answered. Alongside quotes, every response carries a quote_errors array naming each carrier that did not produce a price:

{
  "quotes": { "allied": { "total": 79.24 } },
  "quote_errors": [
    { "courier": "northline", "code": "no_service", "serviceability": "route.not_serviced", "retryable": false },
    { "courier": "aramex", "code": "no_response", "serviceability": "carrier.unavailable", "retryable": true }
  ]
}

Field	Description
courier	The carrier string_id that did not quote
code	Coarse legacy bucket: no_service, no_response, invalid_response, courier_error
serviceability	Canonical reason — see the table below
retryable	true when the condition is transient and re-quoting the lane may succeed

Do not present a partial set as a complete one

The two kinds of absence look identical in quotes — the carrier is simply not there — but they mean opposite things:

• The carrier does not serve this shipment. Nothing is missing. Normal, and true of some carriers on almost every route.
• The carrier should have quoted and didn’t — a timeout, a network drop, an upstream 5xx, expired credentials. A price is missing, and it may well be the cheapest one.

If you show a “cheapest” or “best price” result, or auto-select a carrier, check quote_errors for the second kind first. Treating that set as complete is how a shipper ends up shown a rate at twice the real cheapest, with nothing on screen to say so.

Test it with serviceability, as an allow-list of genuine absences — every code in the “No” rows below — so anything unrecognised counts as a missing price.

Do not test it with retryable. That answers a different question, “is another attempt worth making?”, and only carrier.unavailable is retryable. A malformed upstream response, an unmapped courier failure and an expired token are all retryable: false and all mean a price is missing.

Serviceability codes

serviceability	Meaning	A price is missing?
route.not_serviced	Lane, area or zone not covered	No
route.restricted_postcode	Origin/destination outside coverage	No
route.no_residential	Carrier does not serve residential on this lane	No
items.not_serviced	Item type or packaging not accepted	No
items.over_limit	Item exceeds weight or dimension limits	No
service.unavailable	No eligible service or rate for this shipment	No
carrier.unavailable	Carrier API timed out or was unreachable	Yes — and worth retrying (the only retryable: true code)
config.error	Credentials or configuration problem on the carrier account	Yes — but retrying will not help; fix or report it
courier.error	Malformed upstream response, or an unmapped carrier failure	Yes

Treat an unrecognised code as “a price is missing”: over-warning on something new is safer than quietly dropping a cheaper rate.

config.error covers both a carrier that is simply not configured for the account and a credential failure on one that should be quoting. The response cannot separate them, so it sits on the “missing” side — a price is absent either way.

Quotes in eCommerce plugins

If you’re using a WooCommerce, Shopify, or Magento plugin, the quoting process is handled automatically. Your plugin:

1. Captures the customer’s delivery address at checkout
2. Sends the cart items with dimensions and weights to Transdirect
3. Displays the available shipping options and prices to the customer

You can control which quotes are shown using quote display settings and courier settings.