C.H. Robinson has rolled out two new AI agents to address the complex coordination required in less-than-truckload shipping that often leads to missed pickups.
The 3PL has created one AI agent that calls carriers about missed pickups and another that uses advanced reasoning to determine next steps. The two agents work together, making 100 calls and decisions simultaneously to resolve missed pickups faster.
So far, the AI agents have decreased return trips to pick up missed freight by 42%.
“A missed pickup isn’t just a minor inconvenience,” said C.H. Robinson Vice President for LTL Greg West. “When a truck arrives and the freight or packaging isn’t ready, or the carrier couldn’t make it because they got stuck in traffic, it forces another truck to come back the next day. That might not even be our shipper’s freight, but it creates a domino effect for other freight that was supposed to get picked up and for all the other trucks down the line.”
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The AI agents are helping carriers, too, West said.
This has enabled C.H. Robinson to share new missed pickup data with carriers every day, allowing them to optimize scheduling by isolating operational issues to specific terminals.
“Before this transformational tech, teams of people spent over half the day chasing missed pickups—manually checking carrier websites, making calls, recording updates, and notifying customers,” West said. “If we couldn’t nail down the shipment’s status, we’d have to retender it, and carriers would send another truck, often to find the freight still wasn’t ready or had already been picked up. Now that all that time and capacity aren’t being wasted, it keeps other shippers’ freight from getting delayed.”
Shippers’ freight moves up to a day faster because of C.H. Robinson’s efficiency gains through the new AI agents.
The 3PL has been able to save more than 350 hours of manual work per day by using the AI agents to automate 95% of checks on missed LTL pickups and resolve hundreds of shipments a day across more than 11,000 customers so far.
C.H. Robinson also uses AI agents to handle LTL price quotes, orders, freight classification, shipment tracking, and proof of delivery—all part of the company’s Lean AI approach to implementing artificial intelligence.
“We don’t just throw AI at anything and everything. It’s not a hobby for us. We use AI agents only where they can deliver tangible business results,” said C.H. Robinson Vice President for Artificial Intelligence Mark Albrecht. “Our Lean AI processes helped us uncover the extent of time wasted in handling missed pickups and where artificial intelligence had the most potential to augment our automation software. The agents first started assisting the small- and medium-sized customers who use our Freightquote platform. Then, in July, we started scaling the agents across our LTL customers, giving them faster, smarter, better supply chains.”
