The multi-trillion-dollar logistics industry runs on trucks, trains, ships, and planes — and on calls, texts, and email. Now, artificial intelligence is increasingly handling that endless back-and-forth, helping freight brokers and carriers respond to quote requests, negotiate pricing, and track shipments far faster than humans can.
«We get hundreds of thousands of emails saying, 'Hey, I have this freight that needs to move from X to Y — how much would it cost?'» says Mike Neill, chief technology officer at logistics provider C.H. Robinson. The details vary from load to load and mode to mode, but generally a company that wants to ship goods reaches out to freight brokers, who in turn connect with carriers that actually haul the goods. Getting details right — whether the shipper has a full truckload, specific insurance requirements, or cargo needing special handling, and when and where the carrier must send a truck — traditionally meant a lot of back-and-forth handled by people sitting at phones or computers.
That is changing. C.H. Robinson, considered the largest freight broker in North America with 37 million shipments managed per year, gradually rolled out a suite of AI agents, starting with bots that simply detected whether incoming emails were asking for shipping quotes. Over time, those advanced to pull more information from quote requests and ultimately respond to many requests automatically. «We determined that the humans weren't getting to all the opportunities,» says Neill. «They weren't getting to it in a timely manner.» Many shippers can now get a response within seconds, helping the company win more business, increase the number of shipments processed by each employee, and boost its margins per transaction.
Other logistics companies have turned to tech firms focused specifically on applying AI to the sprawling sector. Harish Abbott, cofounder and CEO of supply chain AI company Augment, describes the pre-AI system of calls and emails as imposing a «coordination tax» that leads to waste and unnecessary delays. «Trucks have to wait, they go empty miles, warehouses have to have underutilized labor, or businesses have to carry more inventory,» he says. Augment's AI system, called Augie, can sift through brokers' incoming email to spot shippers looking for a quote or the status of a delivery, or detect when a carrier is looking to get paid or seeking more cargo. The AI can generate quotes based on rules or by integration with an existing quoting engine, understanding when more information is needed and routing requests to a human if necessary. It can also run automated security checks, making sure a potential counterparty is actually someone a business wants to deal with.
Augie can even place calls or emails to carriers, speaking in a variety of languages as needed, and extract data from emailed updates in various formats. The company also offers its technology to carriers themselves, where it can respond to incoming quote requests, pull important data about shipments, and communicate with drivers about their status. In some cases, Augie may even be participating on both sides of a conversation, though Abbott emphasizes that each instance of the software acts on behalf of the appropriate client's best interests. «Literally every month, the number of incidences where AI is talking to AI, Augie is talking to Augie, is going up,» he says.
Robert Nathan, founder and CEO of logistics AI company Envoy AI, says the technology can help shift people away from busywork like answering emails, tracking shipments, and transcribing updates from carrier to shipper. «These are college-educated individuals doing low-level tasks, and I think that this next generation of operators deserves better,» says Nathan. Envoy's AI, known as Ellie, can help carrier reps negotiate pricing, communicating with carriers via email, phone, or text as appropriate. «You really try to communicate and meet the trucker or the dispatcher where they are,» says Nathan.
Like other AI providers in the industry, Envoy's system can be configured to negotiate within existing guardrails and get human pre-approval before deals are done to minimize the effects of AI hallucinations, so businesses shouldn't have to worry about AI proposing or accepting money-losing bids. As Nathan points out, the AI can answer emails around the clock and doesn't experience hunger or fatigue, factors that can impact humans in their negotiations. In turn, human employees can spend more time building relationships with business associates, which can help establish longer-term arrangements for regularly recurring shipments or make it easier to address problems so they don't happen again.