Caravan Group — Cross-Border Trucking Capacity & Quote Request

Purpose

Given a Canada↔USA cross-border freight shipment of interest, return (a) Caravan Group of Companies' published capacity profile (asset-based fleet inventory, brokered/3PL coverage, equipment types, geographic lanes, terminal network, certifications) and (b) the canonical path to obtain pricing — Caravan does not publish real-time rates on the website, so "pricing" resolves to either a populated/staged Rate Request submission or the published toll-free / e-mail contact channels with a structured rate-request payload. Read-only: never click Get a Rate! — stop after the form is staged or after fetching the public capacity pages.

When to Use

• A shipper / broker wants to know whether Caravan covers their lane, equipment type, or commodity before contacting sales.
• A 3PL / TMS integration needs to populate a carrier-capability record for Caravan (asset-based + non-asset, fleet count, terminals, bonded status, CTPAT/PIP).
• An agent has been asked "is Caravan a fit for my Canada–US load, and how do I get a quote from them?"
• Any flow that needs to differentiate Caravan's asset arm (Caravan Logistics fleet, ~450 tracked power units) from its non-asset / brokerage arm ("Caravan's logistics department" with 3PL carrier-partners) — both arms are documented under the same domain.

Workflow

Capacity discovery is purely static-HTML fetch — no JavaScript, no anti-bot, no proxy required. The Caravan site is a WordPress install (Apache + PHP/7.4 + Genesis "business-pro-theme") that serves complete pre-rendered HTML for every services page. Pricing, however, is not exposed online at all — there is no public rates API and no instant-quote calculator. The only quote path is the JotForm-hosted Rate Request form (CAPTCHA-gated → cannot complete end-to-end as a pure HTTP/headless flow without OCR or human-in-the-loop), or the toll-free phone / e-mail. Lead with the fetch path for capacity; for pricing, stage the JotForm payload and either (i) hand the captcha to a human/OCR step, or (ii) emit the structured rate-request bundle alongside the phone/e-mail fallback.

1. Capacity & coverage (HTTP GET — no session needed)

The information that answers "what can Caravan haul, on which lanes, with which equipment, asset vs. non-asset?" lives on five static service pages plus a locations page. Fetch them in parallel:

GET https://caravangroup.com/services/cross-border/
GET https://caravangroup.com/services/full-truckload/
GET https://caravangroup.com/services/less-than-truckload/
GET https://caravangroup.com/services/temperature-controlled/
GET https://caravangroup.com/services/just-in-time/
GET https://caravangroup.com/services/cross-dock-warehousing/
GET https://caravangroup.com/about/logistics/             # ← brokerage / 3PL arm
GET https://caravangroup.com/contact-us/locations/        # ← terminal network

Each page is < 50 KB, returns 200 OK to a bare curl (no User-Agent filtering, no Cloudflare/Akamai), and the meaningful prose is inside <main>...</main>. Extract by stripping <style>, <script>, and remaining tags. Key facts to lift, by page:

The asset/non-asset distinction is fundamental to this task: Caravan operates both models simultaneously and the website surfaces each on a different page. Do not conflate. Asset-based capacity is the 450-tractor fleet documented on the FTL/LTL/temp/JIT/cross-border pages; non-asset/brokerage capacity is the 3PL-partner network documented on /about/logistics/.

2. Pricing — stage the Rate Request form

Caravan publishes no rates anywhere on the public site. The single online quoting path is https://caravangroup.com/rate-request/, which loads a JotForm (form id 81999264940977) via:

<script src="//www.jotform.com/jsform/81999264940977?redirect=1"></script>

The form-server source is also directly fetchable at https://form.jotform.com/81999264940977 and https://www.jotform.com/form/81999264940977 (both return the same HTML). Use either to discover field structure programmatically rather than driving the embed.

Field map (names are the literal name="..." attributes JotForm's POST endpoint expects):

JotForm submit endpoint (observed in the form's <form action>):

POST https://submit.jotform.com/submit/81999264940977
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

The page also embeds two anti-bot fields that the inline <script> populates client-side: simple_spc = "81999264940977-81999264940977" (literal) and a hidden honeypot name="website" that must remain empty. POSTing without first GETting /jsform/81999264940977 (to obtain a CAPTCHA session cookie) will be rejected.

Read-only stop point. Stage the payload — set every value, validate it against the table above, snapshot the form. Do not click Get a Rate! unless a human operator has authorized the actual submission and supplied the CAPTCHA text. Submission triggers a JotForm e-mail to Caravan sales and a redirect to caravangroup.com/rate-request/?redirect=1; treat it the same way you would a booking confirmation in other browse.sh skills.

3. Fallback channels for pricing (always include in the response)

Even when the form path succeeds, surface these out-of-band channels — they are how a human rep ultimately replies, and they are the only realistic path when CAPTCHA-driven automation is not available:

• Toll-free: 1-888-828-1727 (24/7 Oakville HQ; quote desk hours not published but support is 24/7).
• General e-mail: [email protected] — e-mail with the same field set the form collects (origin, destination, pickup date, commodity, weight, FTL vs LTL, comments).
• Customer login (existing accounts only): https://caravanlogistics.freightassist.com — a FreightAssist TMS instance. Requires credentials issued by Caravan; the public site does not offer self-service signup. Useful to mention but unreachable for a new prospect.

Browser fallback

If the JotForm embed fails to render (rare — observed reliable across browse cloud fetch --proxies and a stealth-free remote browser session in iter-1), open https://form.jotform.com/81999264940977 directly in a remote session. The form is the same; the wrapping caravangroup.com chrome is the only difference. The iframe a11y root is [0-*] and the fields above are typed exactly as shown — e.g. browse fill @0-3 "ACME Corp" for Company Name, @0-4 first name, @0-5 last name, @0-6 e-mail, etc. (refs verified iter-1, but JotForm renumbers across page-loads; re-snapshot rather than caching.)

Site-Specific Gotchas

• Asset vs non-asset is split across two URLs. The asset-based fleet (~450 tractors) is described on every /services/* page. The non-asset/brokerage arm is only on /about/logistics/. An agent that fetches only the services menu will silently miss the 3PL capability. Always include /about/logistics/ when the prompt mentions "non-asset", "brokerage", or "3PL".
• The LTL radio value is byte-truncated. The q31_capacity31 LTL option's literal value attribute is "Less Than Truck Load (LTL" — closing ) is missing. Confirmed in both the raw /jsform/ HTML and the browser-rendered iframe. Submit it character-for-character or the option will not register.
• q33_numberOf is hidden by default. JotForm hides the skids/pallets input until the LTL radio is clicked. Direct POSTs can include it unconditionally; browser-driven flows must click the LTL radio first or the field stays display:none.
• Pickup Date is required per the UI but not flagged in the jf-required class list. Trust the red asterisk in the rendered form, not the static HTML class set. (Iter-1 evidence: screenshot 02-jotform-rendered.png shows the red * next to "Pickup Date" while the source <li id="id_36"> lacks jf-required.)
• CAPTCHA blocks pure HTTP automation. The <input name="captcha"> is required and validated server-side against an image at https://cdn.jotfor.ms/.... There is no Turnstile / reCAPTCHA / hCaptcha bypass; an end-to-end automated submission needs OCR (JotForm CAPTCHAs are simple 5–6 char alphanumerics — feasible with Tesseract or a vision model) or a human-in-the-loop step.
• q36_pickupDate accepts mm-dd-yyyy, not ISO. The placeholder in the rendered input is literally mm-dd-yyyy. Sending 2026-06-15 will fail HTML5 validation client-side; split into month=06, day=15, year=2026.
• Country dropdown default is United States. Both q20_shipmentOrigin[country] and q27_shipmentDestination[country] pre-select United States. Cross-border-from-Canada loads must explicitly set origin country to Canada — otherwise the rep gets a malformed inquiry that needs follow-up to disambiguate.
• /customer-login is not a public path. The footer's "CUSTOMER LOGIN" link goes off-domain to caravanlogistics.freightassist.com. Do not waste turns trying to use it for prospect quote discovery; it is a TMS portal for existing accounts.
• The map at /service-map/ is a Google-Maps embed via the uscanadahtmlmap WP plugin — pin data is not in the page HTML. If you need the actual terminal lat/lons, scrape them from the locations text on /contact-us/locations/ (full addresses listed in plain text) and geocode separately. The map UI is for human eyes only.
• WordPress / WooCommerce vestigials. The site bundles a WooCommerce store (/caravan-shop/) and a Site-Kit GA tag (GT-5NGV43ZG). The currency reported by googlesitekit.wcdata.currency is "GBP" — leftover misconfiguration; do not treat as a pricing signal. All actual quotes are in USD or CAD per the rep, not GBP.
• No robots.txt Disallow blocks the service pages. Fetching with a plain User-Agent works; bb cloud fetch --proxies is sufficient for any rate-limit safety margin. Stealth/--verified are not needed.
• The toll-free 1-888-828-1727 is the same across every Canadian terminal page. Each terminal also lists a direct local number; for sales/quote the toll-free is the right channel. (Calgary uses a different toll-free, 1-800-268-3045, but routes to the same dispatch.)
• No instant-rate API has been confirmed. Checked: no JSON endpoint under /wp-json/, no GraphQL surface, no /api/, no /rate-quote.php. The FreightAssist back-end likely has one (FreightAssist is a Trimple/McLeod-style TMS) but it is not exposed to anonymous traffic. Do not waste iterations probing for one — confirmed absent.

Expected Output

The skill emits a single JSON object combining (a) the capacity card and (b) the staged or submitted rate-request payload. Three terminal shapes:

Shape A — capacity card only (no rate request requested)

{
  "carrier": {
    "legal_name": "Caravan Group of Companies",
    "hq_address": "2284 Wyecroft Road, Oakville, ON L6L 6M1, Canada",
    "founded": 1997,
    "domain": "caravangroup.com",
    "asset_based": true,
    "non_asset_based": true,
    "asset_description": "Modern fleet of 450+ satellite-tracked power units, equipment age <5 years, rear disc brakes, e-logs",
    "non_asset_description": "In-house logistics / brokerage department placing freight with vetted 3PL carrier-partners across Canada and cross-border to mainland USA",
    "capacity": {
      "full_truckload": true,
      "less_than_truckload": true,
      "temperature_controlled": ["cold", "frozen", "heated"],
      "flatbed": true,
      "dedicated": true,
      "just_in_time": true,
      "cross_dock_warehousing_sqft": 50000
    },
    "geography": {
      "intra_canada": "all provinces",
      "cross_border": "Canada ↔ 48 mainland US states",
      "primary_lanes": ["Midwest", "Eastern Seaboard / Great Lakes", "California / US West Coast"]
    },
    "terminals": [
      {"country": "CA", "province": "ON", "city": "Oakville", "address": "2284 Wyecroft Road, L6L 6M1", "role": "HQ"},
      {"country": "CA", "province": "ON", "city": "London", "address": "3960 Commerce Rd., N6N 1P8"},
      {"country": "CA", "province": "QC", "city": "Vaudreuil-Dorion", "address": "500 Montée Labossière, J7V 8P2"},
      {"country": "CA", "province": "MB", "city": "Winnipeg", "address": "68 Bergen Cutoff Road, R3C 2E6"},
      {"country": "CA", "province": "SK", "city": "Regina", "address": "12202 Rotary Avenue, S4M 0A1"},
      {"country": "CA", "province": "AB", "city": "Calgary (Rocky View)", "address": "290244 High Plains Road, T4A 0T8"},
      {"country": "US", "state": "IL", "city": "Chicago", "address": "100 S State St, Suite 400A, 60603", "role": "Caravan Supply Chain"}
    ],
    "certifications": ["CTPAT", "PIP", "US-bonded warehouse", "Canadian-bonded warehouse"],
    "tech": ["EDI", "satellite tracking", "e-logs", "in-cab scanners", "FreightAssist TMS"],
    "contact": {
      "toll_free": "1-888-828-1727",
      "direct": "905-338-5885",
      "email": "[email protected]",
      "rate_request_url": "https://caravangroup.com/rate-request/",
      "customer_portal": "https://caravanlogistics.freightassist.com"
    }
  },
  "pricing": {
    "online_instant_quote": false,
    "rationale": "Caravan does not publish or expose any real-time rate. Pricing requires a Rate Request form submission or direct contact with a Caravan sales representative."
  }
}

Shape B — capacity card + staged rate-request payload (form filled, not submitted)

{
  "carrier": { "...": "as Shape A" },
  "rate_request": {
    "status": "staged",
    "submitted": false,
    "reason_not_submitted": "captcha_required",
    "form_id": "81999264940977",
    "form_url": "https://caravangroup.com/rate-request/",
    "fields": {
      "q34_companyName": "ACME Manufacturing Inc.",
      "q19_fullName[first]": "Jane",
      "q19_fullName[last]": "Doe",
      "q22_email": "[email protected]",
      "q21_phoneNumber[area]": "416",
      "q21_phoneNumber[phone]": "555-0142",
      "q36_pickupDate[month]": "06",
      "q36_pickupDate[day]": "15",
      "q36_pickupDate[year]": "2026",
      "q20_shipmentOrigin[city]": "Toronto",
      "q20_shipmentOrigin[state]": "ON",
      "q20_shipmentOrigin[postal]": "M5V 1A1",
      "q20_shipmentOrigin[country]": "Canada",
      "q27_shipmentDestination[city]": "Chicago",
      "q27_shipmentDestination[state]": "IL",
      "q27_shipmentDestination[postal]": "60601",
      "q27_shipmentDestination[country]": "United States",
      "q28_commodityType": "Auto parts",
      "q29_approximateWeight29": "38000 lb",
      "q31_capacity31": "Full Truck Load (FTL)",
      "q18_comments": "Dry van, no temperature requirement. Standard 53' trailer. Please quote spot + contract."
    },
    "captcha_required": true,
    "next_step": "Hand off CAPTCHA solve to operator, then POST to https://submit.jotform.com/submit/81999264940977"
  }
}

Shape C — capacity-out-of-scope (lane or service Caravan does not advertise)

{
  "carrier": { "legal_name": "Caravan Group of Companies", "domain": "caravangroup.com" },
  "match": {
    "in_scope": false,
    "reason": "no_advertised_coverage",
    "detail": "Requested service was 'Hawaii intermodal container drayage'; Caravan's published lanes cover Canada and the 48 contiguous US states only. No mention of Hawaii, Alaska, intermodal/rail, Mexico, or ocean drayage on any /services/* page.",
    "suggested_alternative_inquiry": "Submit a Rate Request with the unusual lane in the Comments field — Caravan may broker via their non-asset arm (/about/logistics/) even when not advertised — but do not assume coverage."
  }
}