C.H. Robinson has launched new AI agents that perform work across several freight forwarding services including ocean freight, air freight and customs, expanding on the company’s ongoing deployment of AI technology across its logistics segments.
The Eden Prairie, Minn.-based third-party logistics (3PL) provider said its recently unveiled AI agents can price ocean and air cargo, manage ocean freight bookings and handle much of the document work needed to clear U.S. customs.
Previously, C.H. Robinson already had been using AI agents to price quotes in its trucking business across truckload, less-than-truckload (LTL), temperature-controlled, flatbed and hotshot shipments.
The 3PL first expanded the agentic price quoting technology to ocean freight last year, unveiling agents that could help assist shippers looking to move less-than-container-load (LCL) cargo in the U.S. and Canada.
With the new update, the agents now expand price quoting to customers in Mexico, Europe, Latin America and Oceania. Additionally, price quoting is now available for full-container ocean freight and air cargo. The technology is currently being piloted for customers in China and is expected to go live for customers in Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and Africa in the fourth quarter.
Price quoting is the most mature part of the new forwarding system, with agents already delivering more than 80,000 quotes for more than 3,600 customers. Quotes that took one day for air and two to three days for ocean now take two to three minutes, the company said.
According to C.H. Robinson, a single shipping task can require over a dozen AI agents working in tandem. Together they decipher what a shipper needs, seek information from outside parties, weigh origin and destination variables and make routing decisions.
“Take a shipment out of Shanghai, for example. To price that, an AI agent first has to decipher which of the two ports in Shanghai the shipper means. One is a longer haul to get to and there’s a toll on the way, plus the 43 terminals charge different fees,” said Mike Short, president of global forwarding at C.H. Robinson, in a statement. “The terminal fees at origin and destination change constantly. So another AI agent checks their websites every day and monitors emails for fee notices. That way people in two different time zones don’t have to call every terminal for every price quote.”
If the shipper doesn’t designate an origin port, other AI agents can step in to suggest the best option. It can also suggest the inland routing by either truck, rail or barge and the destination port.
Another set of AI agents manages requests for ocean freight bookings. C.H. Robinson first launched them in China in August and will roll them out to the rest of Asia in the fourth quarter. Globally, the agents are expected to go live in the 2027 first quarter.
One of those AI agents enhances booking requests with customer-specific context. The system is designed to ensure the other agents operate efficiently while still accounting for individual customer preferences, requirements and procedures for their shipments.
C.H. Robinson chief technology officer Mike Neill said the company had achieved only about 5 percent automation for ocean and air booking requests over about 10 years before agentic AI.
“We have more work to do automating all the steps for booking, but this is already a major leap forward,” Neill observed.
Beyond automating C.H. Robinson’s freight forwarding capabilities, AI agents that assist the company’s customs team are tackling what had been manual handling of over four dozen types of documents from shippers, carriers and government agencies needed to clear U.S. customs.
Incoming documents are split up, classified and attached to individual shipments. An AI agent extracts the necessary data, the system monitors for missing documents and requests them and automated invoices and information packets are sent out at the end.
Time spent on the work has fallen 23 percent, C.H. Robinson said, letting the company’s customs brokers focus more on compliance.
The launch follows the 3PL’s $5.8 billion agreement to acquire freight brokerage RXO earlier this month.
C.H. Robinson’s total revenues increased 29.5 percent to $5.4 billion in its third quarter, the company said Wednesday. The growth was primarily driven by higher pricing in the truckload, LTL, ocean and air services and higher volume in truckload services.
Net income totaled $198.5 million, up 21.8 percent from a year ago, on adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.80.
