Privacy Policy

Last updated: 13 November 2026

Real Rate Freight is a website where shippers post freight loads and verified carriers bid on them or book them. We are a software company. We are not a broker, a carrier or a shipper.
We collect only what the platform needs to work: who you are, who your company is, the details of loads, bids, messages, photos and ratings.
Street addresses and phone numbers are shown only to the carrier booked on that load. Carriers never see each other's bids.
We do not sell your information. We do not show ads. We do not use analytics or tracking cookies.
Our platform runs on Google's cloud services. Some information, such as the email address you sign in with, is handled in the United States.
You can ask to see, correct or delete your personal information. Write to support@realratefreight.com.

1. Who we are

This policy explains how Real Rate Freight ("we", "us") handles personal information on realratefreight.com (the "platform"). We are based in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

The person responsible for privacy at Real Rate Freight is our Privacy Officer. You can reach this person at support@realratefreight.com.

2. Who this policy covers

The platform is for businesses. It is by invitation only. People use it on behalf of a business, for example as a shipping manager, a dispatcher or an owner-operator.

Much of what we hold is business information, such as a company name or a load description. Business information about a company is not personal information. But some of it can also be about a person. For example, if you are an owner-operator and run your business in your own name, your business details are also your personal details. We treat that information as personal information under this policy.

The platform is not meant for anyone under 18.

3. What we collect, why, and who sees it

We collect information in three ways: you give it to us, other users give it to us (for example, when they rate you or send you a message), and our systems record it when you use the platform.

What we collect	Why we collect it	Who can see it
Account details: your name, work email address, company name, city, and your role (shipper or carrier)	To create your account, sign you in, and show other users who they are dealing with	Our staff. Other users see your name and company when you post, bid, book or send a message.
Invite requests: name, email address and company of a person who asks to join	To decide whether to invite that person, and to reply	Our staff only
Carrier verification details: Ontario CVOR number, insurance certificate (the file you upload), insurer and cargo cover details, safety rating, equipment types, and lanes served	To check that a carrier is real, insured and fit to haul freight, and to help shippers choose a carrier	Our staff. Shippers see a carrier's verified facts. They cannot open the certificate file itself.
Carrier dispatch phone number	So the shipper can reach the carrier about a booked load	Our staff. The shipper on that load, but only after the carrier confirms pickup
Shipper location and contact details: dock, pickup and delivery addresses, contact phone numbers, and purchase order numbers	So the booked carrier can pick up and deliver the freight	Our staff. Only the carrier booked on that load
Load details: freight description, skids, weight, dates, prices, bids and counter-offers	To run the load board, the bidding and the booking	Our staff. The shipper who posted the load. Carriers see the load details needed to bid. A carrier never sees another carrier's bid
Messages between a shipper and a carrier	To let the two sides arrange the load, and to help us sort out problems and disputes	The shipper and the carrier in that conversation. Our staff
Photos: proof of delivery, damage claim evidence, and evidence for extra charges	To show that freight was delivered, and to support or answer a claim or an extra charge	The shipper and the carrier on that load. Our staff
Ratings that shippers and carriers give each other	To help users choose who to work with, and to keep the platform trustworthy	Our staff. Shippers see a carrier's ratings, and carriers see a shipper's ratings.
Shipper payment record: whether a shipper paid carriers on time, as marked on the platform	To help carriers decide whether to take a shipper's load	Our staff. Verified carriers who can see that shipper's loads.
Fee invoices: the invoices we send to carriers for our platform fee	To charge our fee and keep our business and tax records	Our staff and the carrier being invoiced
Notifications shown to you inside the platform	To tell you about invites, bids, bookings and other activity on your account	You. Our staff
Technical logs: standard records made when your browser connects to the platform, such as your IP address, browser type, and the date and time	To keep the platform running and secure, and to find and fix faults	Our staff and our hosting provider (Google)

What we do not collect

We do not collect card numbers or bank details. We charge carriers our fee by invoice. No freight money passes through us.
We do not ask you to set a password. You sign in with a link we send to your email address.
We do not track the location of trucks, drivers or phones.
We do not ask for driver's licences, dates of birth or other government ID of individual people.

4. How we use your information

We use personal information only for these purposes:

to set up and manage accounts and sign users in;
to verify carriers before they can bid or book;
to run the platform: posting loads, bidding, counter-offers, booking, messages, proof of delivery, claims and extra charges;
to show ratings and the shipper payment record to other users, as described in section 3;
to send you emails and in-platform notices about your account and your loads;
to invoice carriers for our fee;
to give support, look into complaints, and help sort out disputes between users;
to keep the platform safe, and to prevent fraud and misuse;
to meet our legal duties, and to protect our legal rights.

If we want to use your personal information for a new purpose, we will tell you first. We will ask for your consent where the law requires it.

We do not make decisions about you by computer alone. People on our staff review carrier verification and account decisions.

5. Your consent

When you ask for an invite, create an account or use the platform, you agree that we may handle your personal information as this policy describes. We collect only what we need for the purposes in section 4.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by writing to support@realratefreight.com. If you do, we may not be able to keep your account open, because the platform cannot work without some of this information. We may also need to keep some records for legal reasons (see section 10).

Information you give us about other people

Sometimes you give us information about other people. Examples are a dock contact's name and phone number, or a photo that shows a driver, a signature or a licence plate. Please make sure you are allowed to share that information. Please tell those people that it will be shared on the platform as this policy describes.

6. What other users can see

We built the platform so each user sees only what they need.

Street addresses and contact phone numbers for pickup and delivery are shown only to the carrier booked on that load.
A carrier's dispatch phone number stays hidden until the carrier confirms pickup.
Bids: carriers never see each other's bids.
Carrier facts and ratings: shippers can see a carrier's verified facts and its ratings.
Messages and photos on a load are seen by the shipper and the carrier on that load.

Once another user has seen your information, for example a booked carrier who has the delivery address, that user is responsible for how they handle it. Our Terms of Use require users to use this information only for the load.

7. Our staff

Our authorized staff can see all information on the platform, including messages and photos. They use this access only to verify carriers, give support, look into problems and disputes, keep the platform safe, and meet legal duties.

8. Photos

Photos uploaded as proof of delivery, or as evidence for a damage claim or an extra charge, are meant to show freight, paperwork and places. They can also show people, signatures or licence plates by accident.

Please take photos of the freight and the paperwork only. Avoid faces and other people where you can.
We do not use photos to identify people. We do not use face recognition.
Photos are seen only by the shipper and the carrier on that load, and by our staff.

9. Companies that help us run the platform, and where your information is kept

We do not sell or rent personal information. We share it with other companies only so they can provide services to us. These companies may use the information only to provide those services.

Google (Firebase and Google Cloud). Google hosts the website, the database, uploaded files and our server code. Google also sends the sign-in link emails and handles sign-in. Our server code runs in Google's Toronto, Canada region. Our database and uploaded files are also stored in Google's Toronto, Canada region. Google's sign-in service runs from data centres in the United States. This means your email address and sign-in records are handled in the United States. Google delivers website pages through a worldwide network, so its servers in other countries may handle your connection.
Email. Today the only emails the platform sends are sign-in links, and Google sends them. Other updates show inside the platform. If we start using another company to send emails, we will name it here first.
Fonts and a code library. The platform loads fonts from Google Fonts and one code library from cdnjs, a service run by Cloudflare. To deliver these files, Google and Cloudflare receive your IP address and basic browser details. Their servers may be outside Canada. We do not send them your name, your account details or anything you enter on the platform.

Information outside your province or outside Canada

Because of the services above, some personal information is stored or handled outside Quebec, and some outside Canada, mainly in the United States. While it is in another country, it is subject to that country's laws. Courts, police and government agencies there may be able to get access to it under those laws.

We remain responsible for your personal information when a service provider handles it for us. We use written agreements with our service providers to protect it. If you have questions about our service providers outside Canada, write to support@realratefreight.com.

Other times we may share information

Legal reasons. We may share information when the law requires it, such as under a court order, or when the law allows it and it is needed to look into fraud or a breach of an agreement.
Disputes between users. If a shipper and a carrier have a dispute about a load, we may give each of them the records of that load, such as messages, photos and booking history.
Sale of the business. If our business is sold or merged, personal information may be passed to the new owner. The new owner must keep using it only for the purposes in this policy.

10. How long we keep information

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy, or as long as the law requires. After that we delete it or make it anonymous.

Account details: while your account is open, and 7 years after it closes.
Load records (load details, bids, bookings, messages, ratings, shipper payment record and fee invoices): 7 years after the load is completed or cancelled. We keep these because tax law requires business records to be kept for six years after the end of the tax year, and because claims about a load can come up later.
Photos: 2 years after delivery. We keep them longer if a claim or dispute about the load is still open.
Carrier verification documents (such as insurance certificates): while the carrier's account is open, and 7 years after the last load the document covered.
Invite requests that are not accepted: 12 months.
Technical logs: a short time, set by our hosting provider. Google states that it keeps sign-in IP addresses for a few weeks and website hosting IP addresses for a few months.
Records of privacy incidents: at least two years, as the law requires.

If you ask us to delete your information, we will do so unless we must keep it for a legal reason, an open dispute, or an unpaid invoice. Ratings and load records you were part of may stay on the other user's record without your personal details.

11. How we protect information

We use safeguards that fit the sensitivity of the information. These include:

access rules in the platform, so each user sees only the information described in sections 3 and 6;
sign-in by a one-time link sent to your work email address, so there is no password to steal or guess;
access to all records limited to authorized staff, for the purposes in section 7;
hosting on Google Cloud.

No system is perfectly safe. You can help by keeping your email account secure, by not forwarding sign-in links, and by telling us right away if you think someone else has used your account.

If something goes wrong

If there is a privacy incident that creates a real risk of serious harm to you, we will tell you as soon as we can. We will also report it to the privacy regulators, as the law requires. We keep a record of every privacy incident.

12. Emails we send

Sign-in links are sent when you ask to sign in.
Service emails, when we send them, tell you about invites, bids, counter-offers, bookings, deliveries, claims and your account. These are part of the service. You cannot turn them all off while you have an account.
Invitations and other messages that promote the platform. We send these only as Canada's anti-spam law allows. Every such email says who sent it, how to contact us, and how to unsubscribe. If you unsubscribe, we will stop within 10 business days.

13. Cookies, browser storage and outside resources

No tracking. We do not use advertising cookies, tracking cookies or analytics tools.
Browser storage. When you sign in, your browser stores a small amount of data on your device to keep you signed in. We use it only for that. It is removed when you sign out. If you clear your browser's site data, you will be signed out.
Outside resources. As section 9 explains, your browser fetches fonts from Google Fonts and one code library from cdnjs (Cloudflare). Those services receive your IP address when your browser asks for the files.

If we start to use cookies or tools that track how the platform is used, we will update this policy first. We will ask for your consent where the law requires it.

14. Your rights

You have the right to:

see the personal information we hold about you, and learn how we have used it and who we have shared it with;
correct information that is wrong, incomplete or out of date. You can change some of it yourself in your account;
withdraw your consent to our use of your information (see section 5);
ask us to delete your information when we no longer need it;
complain to us, and to a privacy regulator (see section 18).

To use these rights, write to support@realratefreight.com. We may ask you to prove who you are. We will answer within 30 days. There is no fee to ask. If you ask for copies, the law allows us to charge a small, reasonable fee, and we will tell you the cost first.

Sometimes the law does not let us give you everything. For example, we will not give you information that would reveal personal information about another person, or another carrier's bid. If we refuse a request, we will tell you why, and how you can challenge our answer.

15. If you are in Quebec

If you are in Quebec, you also have these rights under Quebec's private sector privacy law:

A copy you can move. You can ask for the personal information you gave us in a structured, commonly used electronic format. You can ask us to send it to another person or organization that you name.
Stopping the spread of information. You can ask us to stop sharing your personal information, or to remove a link attached to your name, if sharing it breaks the law or a court order, or causes you serious harm, as the law sets out.
More detail on request. You can ask which personal information we collected from you, which groups of people at Real Rate Freight can see it, how long we keep it, and how to contact the person responsible for privacy.
Complaint. You can complain to the Commission d'acces a l'information du Quebec.

Your personal information is stored and handled outside Quebec, as section 9 explains.

The platform does not use technology that identifies you, finds your location or builds a profile of you. Ratings and the shipper payment record are based only on what other users mark on the platform about completed loads.

16. If you are in British Columbia or Alberta

This policy and the rights in section 14 apply to you. The person responsible for privacy named in section 1 can answer questions about how we handle your personal information, including how our service providers outside Canada handle it for us.

17. If you are in the United States

The platform is run from Canada, and Canadian law applies to how we handle your information. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for advertising.

18. Questions and complaints

If you have a question or a complaint about how we handle your personal information, write to our Privacy Officer at support@realratefreight.com. We will look into every complaint and tell you what we found and what we will do.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can contact a privacy regulator:

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada: www.priv.gc.ca
Commission d'acces a l'information du Quebec: www.cai.gouv.qc.ca
Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia: www.oipc.bc.ca
Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta: www.oipc.ab.ca

19. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the platform changes. We will post the new version on this page and change the "Last updated" date. If a change is important, for example a new purpose or a new company that receives your information, we will tell you by email or by a notice on the platform before the change takes effect. We will ask for your consent where the law requires it.