A five-sheet Excel workbook for running a third-party logistics RFP: the company profile vendors quote against, a requirements checklist built for contract and dedicated programs, a rate comparison matrix pre-loaded with 2026 Canadian benchmarks, and a weighted vendor scorecard that calculates its own totals.
Benchmark ranges current as of Q2 2026. Free to download and free to use, including on a process we are not part of.
Download the 3PL RFP template. The company profile sheet, the requirements checklist, the rate comparison matrix pre-loaded with 2026 Canadian benchmarks, and the weighted vendor scorecard. One Excel workbook, ready to send to vendors.
This workbook was built for requirements that get procured rather than shopped: dedicated or multi-client contract programs from roughly 50,000 sq ft, sustained throughput above a thousand orders per month or a few hundred pallet positions, multi-site network consolidations, and any requirement where procurement rules oblige you to run competitive bids.
The requirements sheet reflects that. The core of it is commercial structure, operations, compliance, performance governance, and references. Ecommerce and platform integration sits at the end as a short add-on section, because on a contract program the management fee basis, the flex bands, and the exit terms decide the outcome long before the Shopify connector does.
Below that scale, the honest answer is that a formal RFP costs more internal time than it recovers. Evaluate two or three pre-vetted operators directly instead, and keep sheet 3 as the comparison sheet. The workbook still does that job on its own.
The instruction sheet. It states what each tab is for, which sheets go out to vendors and which stay internal, and the volume threshold below which a formal RFP costs more time than it saves.
Send sheets 1 and 2 to every bidder. Keep sheets 3 and 4 internal, they are your evaluation working papers and sharing them tells vendors exactly where the scoring pressure sits.
21 fields that define the requirement vendors are quoting against. Filled in once, sent to everyone, identical for every bidder.
Covers current and peak monthly order volume, units per order, active SKU count, average and peak pallet positions, monthly pallets in and out for B2B flow, inbound freight profile and containers per month, temperature requirement, special handling (hazmat, oversized, lot tracking, expiry), returns rate, ship-to geography, target city or cities, go-live date, acceptable contract length, and budget range. Vague inputs here are the single largest cause of padded quotes. Operators price uncertainty as risk.
A line-item checklist you mark Required, Preferred, or Not needed, with a notes column vendors respond in. Structured around what a dedicated or multi-client contract program is actually evaluated on.
Six sections. Commercial: open-book versus closed-book costing, management fee basis and rate, gainshare mechanism, term, volume commitment and flex bands, CPI indexation, capital contribution and amortisation, exit and transition assistance, peak capacity guarantee, itemized invoicing. Operating: dedicated versus shared space and labour, shift coverage, MHE list and ownership, WMS name and who licenses it, integration method, EDI transaction sets (850, 856, 810, 940, 945), labour rate basis, same-day ship cutoff, cross-dock capability, temperature zones. Compliance and risk: insurance types and limits including warehouse legal liability and cyber, business continuity plan, security accreditation, food and pharma certifications, health and safety record over three years, subcontracting policy. Performance and governance: which KPIs are contractually committed, service credit structure, QBR cadence, reporting and data access, named account manager. References: comparable programs by size and by sector. Ecommerce and integration sits last as a short add-on section rather than the core.
A normalization matrix. Every returned quote goes into one place, line by line, against three vendor columns and a pre-loaded 2026 Canadian benchmark column.
Line items are grouped as storage, handling and receiving, fulfillment, and account. The benchmark column is pre-filled with Warehouse Bridge network ranges (ambient pallet storage $12 – $40 per pallet per month, container destuff $325 – $700, pick and pack $2.50 – $7.00 per order, and the rest), so an outlier is visible without building your own comparables. The account block is where quotes usually diverge: monthly minimum, account management fee, onboarding and setup fee, WMS or technology fee, and EDI per-document charges are the line items most often left out of a headline rate.
Weighted scoring, one to five per criterion, across three vendor columns, with weights pre-loaded to sum to one hundred percent and a weighted total that calculates itself.
Criteria are the ones that predict program performance rather than the ones that are easy to score: modelled total landed cost per order rather than headline rate, integration fit, whether the operator ships to your customer geography from the right zones, references from shippers with your order profile, evidence of last peak season performance, contract flexibility on term and minimums and exit, onboarding speed and plan quality, responsiveness during the RFP itself, and facility fit on walkthrough. Adjust the weights before you score, not after you see the totals.
The full sequence runs eight to twelve weeks on a contract program. The workbook covers the first four steps end to end; the fifth is the part no spreadsheet can do for you.
Complete all 21 fields on sheet 1, including twelve months of volume history with seasonality if you have it. Every bidder receives the identical profile. Do not tailor the requirement per vendor, that is what makes the responses incomparable.
Work sheet 2 line by line and mark each item Required, Preferred, or Not needed. Anything marked Required should be something you would actually disqualify a vendor over. Use the notes column to state measurable targets rather than adjectives.
Invite five to eight operators that already serve your product category, already operate in your target market, and whose minimums fit your volume. Run one consolidated Q&A round and share every answer with every bidder so the quotes stay comparable.
Enter each response into sheet 3 against the same line items. Model a total landed cost per order rather than comparing pick rates: pick fee, additional unit picks, packaging, storage divided by monthly orders, receiving amortized, plus the account block. Flag any line that sits outside the pre-loaded benchmark range and ask what is excluded.
Score each vendor on sheet 4 before site visits, then again after. Visit the two finalists during an afternoon pick window rather than a scheduled morning tour, and confirm the building has the capacity headroom your peak month needs.
The longer version of this process, including the week-by-week timeline and the red flags that show up in responses, is in the guide to running a 3PL RFP in Canada. There are two worked requirement examples as well: a DTC ecommerce RFP and a B2B wholesale RFP.
Sheet 3 ships with a benchmark column so a quote can be judged against something before you have three of them to compare. These are the same Warehouse Bridge network ranges published in the Canadian Warehouse Market Report, spanning 8 markets. Your city sits inside a narrower band than the national spread, so treat these as outlier detection rather than a target.
| Category | Line item | 2026 Canadian range | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storage | Pallet storage, ambient | $12 – $40 | per pallet / month |
| Storage | Refrigerated storage | $22 – $48 | per pallet / month |
| Storage | Frozen storage | $34 – $65 | per pallet / month |
| Handling | Pallet in or out, ambient | $7 – $20 | per pallet, per move |
| Handling | Pallet in or out, temperature-controlled | $10 – $25 | per pallet, per move |
| Handling | Container destuff | $325 – $700 | per 40 ft container |
| Fulfillment | Pick, pack and ship, first unit | $2.50 – $7.00 | per order |
| Yard | Trailer parking, secured yard | $125 – $450 | per 53 ft trailer / month |
Warehouse Bridge network data, current as of Q2 2026. For a market-specific and volume-specific figure, the 3PL cost calculator models the storage and handling side directly.
Take the workbook. Five sheets, 2026 Canadian benchmarks pre-loaded, yours to use on any process. Work email, and it downloads immediately.
A 3PL RFP template is a structured document set you send to shortlisted third-party logistics providers so they quote your business on identical terms. This one is a five-sheet Excel workbook: a read me, a company profile that defines the requirement, a requirements checklist covering commercial, operating, compliance, governance and reference criteria, a rate comparison matrix pre-loaded with 2026 Canadian benchmark ranges, and a weighted vendor scorecard.
Yes. The workbook is free to download and free to use on any procurement process, including one that never involves Warehouse Bridge. Warehouse Bridge operates no warehouse of its own and earns nothing on the brand side, so there is no cost to a shipper for the template or for the matching service behind it.
Roughly a thousand orders per month, or a few hundred pallet positions, is the practical floor. Below that, an eight to twelve week RFP usually costs more in internal time than it recovers in rate, and evaluating two or three pre-vetted operators directly gets to comparable pricing in days. The workbook still earns its keep at that scale as the comparison sheet, even without the formal process around it.
Five to eight invitations typically produces three to five real responses, which is enough for genuine comparison without burying the evaluation team. Fewer than three responses weakens your position at the negotiating table. More than eight signals the list was never qualified, and the strongest operators tend to decline rather than compete in a lottery.
2026 Canadian network ranges by line item, current as of Q2 2026: ambient pallet storage $12 – $40 per pallet per month, pallet handling $7 – $20 per move, pick and pack $2.50 – $7.00 per order, refrigerated storage $22 – $48 and frozen $34 – $65 per pallet per month, and container destuff $325 – $700. Ranges span 8 Canadian markets, so your city sits in a narrower band than the national spread.
Send sheets 1 and 2, the company profile and the requirements checklist. Keep sheets 3 and 4 internal. The rate comparison and the weighted scorecard are your evaluation working papers, and showing a vendor the weights invites a response engineered to the scoring rather than to the operation.
If the shortlist is the part you do not have, that is the part Warehouse Bridge does. We operate no warehouse, so there is no building we need to fill and no steer in the introductions. Requirements go out to matched operators in one normalized format and come back comparable line by line.
For a scoped requirement, talk it through first: (289) 907-3794, or solutions@warehousebridge.ca. Program structures, thresholds, and what a dedicated versus multi-client program actually costs are set out on the enterprise page.
Tell us the volume, the market, and the compliance profile. We will tell you which operators are worth inviting, and what the responses should look like.
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