The typical freight quoting cycle starts with a document. A packing list from your supplier. A purchase order from your ERP. A commercial invoice from the exporter. And then someone has to retype everything — cargo description, weight, dimensions, origin, destination, HS codes — into your freight management system before you can send an RFQ to vendors.
For a single shipment, that's 10 to 20 minutes. For a logistics team running 50 shipments a month, it's a meaningful slice of productive time spent on data re-entry instead of decision-making.
Logwo AI eliminates that step.
What the PDF→RFQ feature does
When you upload a cargo PDF to Logwo, the system reads it and extracts the freight-relevant fields. Within seconds, the RFQ form opens pre-filled with:
- Origin and destination (city and country)
- Cargo description
- HS codes (where present in the document)
- Weight (gross and net, if both are listed)
- Dimensions (length, width, height per package)
- Package count and type (cartons, pallets, drums)
- Incoterms (if specified)
You review the extracted data, make any corrections, and then send. The AI speeds up the entry — the decision and the send action are always yours.
What documents work
The feature handles both digital PDFs (where text can be extracted directly) and scanned documents (where OCR is applied first). In practice, this covers:
- Commercial invoices
- Packing lists
- Purchase orders
- Bill of Lading drafts
- Air Waybill drafts
- Proforma invoices
For scanned documents, extraction accuracy depends on scan quality. A clear, high-resolution scan performs well. A dark, skewed, or handwritten document may extract partially — in which case the unfilled fields remain blank for you to complete.
What the AI does not do
The AI extracts and maps fields. It does not make quoting decisions on your behalf. It does not select vendors, choose freight modes, or accept quotes. Every extracted field is presented to you as a draft — nothing goes to vendors until you click send.
This is by design. Cargo data errors have real consequences: misquoted weights attract surcharges, wrong HS codes can trigger customs holds. The AI saves your time; your expertise is the quality check.
Where to find it
The PDF→RFQ feature is available on Business and Enterprise plans. When creating a new RFQ, look for the "Upload cargo document" option at the top of the RFQ builder. Upload your PDF and the form fills in seconds.
If you're on the Free or Starter plan, you can still build RFQs manually using the full RFQ builder — you just won't have the auto-fill step.
The time maths
A typical RFQ built manually takes 12–18 minutes for a standard shipment. The same RFQ with PDF auto-fill takes 2–4 minutes — one minute for the upload and AI extraction, another for review and any corrections.
If your team sends 30 RFQs a month, that's roughly 6–9 hours of data entry time returned to more useful work. At the Business plan level, that time saving alone covers the cost of the software in the first month.