C.H. Robinson expands AI into ocean, air & customs

C.H. Robinson has expanded its AI systems into ocean shipping, air freight and customs brokerage, extending their use beyond trucking and into freight forwarding.

The new agents now handle price quotes for ocean and air cargo, support ocean bookings and assist with customs paperwork for shipments entering the United States. In some cases, a single shipping task requires more than a dozen AI agents working together.

One of the clearest changes is in price quoting. AI has produced more than 80,000 quotes for more than 3,600 customers, cutting turnaround times from one day for an air shipment and two to three days for an ocean shipment to two to three minutes.

Ocean booking agents have also started managing the thousands of booking requests the company receives each week. In customs brokerage, the systems are processing the many documents needed to clear US Customs, an area that has become more labour-intensive as trade rules and tariffs have grown more complex.

Mike Short, President of Global Forwarding, said the systems were changing the speed and consistency of operations for customers.

"As we've brought our AI playbook to global forwarding, the benefits keep compounding. Customers get the information they need sooner. Data is more consistent. Processes are more predictable. When plans change or disruptions occur, customers can evaluate a new routing, mode of shipping, schedule or price more quickly. Speed to market is also a real competitive advantage. The faster we get you a quote and handle your booking, the faster you get the ideal carrier and the ideal sailing or flight. For a vessel on the water for 15 to 35 days, you don't want to wait weeks for the next one. For an air shipment, life-saving medicines, perishable produce and critical automotive parts absolutely must arrive on time. Our Lean AI makes your supply chain smarter, faster and better," Short said.

Complex tasks

Freight forwarding is more complicated than trucking because pricing often depends on a wider set of variables. These can include the origin port, terminal charges, inland transport links and destination routing, all of which can change frequently.

Short said that in Shanghai, for example, the system may first need to determine which of two ports a shipper means, then factor in tolls, terminal fees and other local conditions. Separate agents also monitor terminal websites and email notices for fee changes, reducing the need for staff in different time zones to gather that information manually.

"With our maturity in using AI to augment our talented experts, only C.H. Robinson is equipped to transform something as complicated as freight forwarding. 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. 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," Short said.

Where a customer does not specify a port, the systems can suggest options based on the pickup point, sailing frequency and inland transport choices such as truck, rail or barge. The same process can also identify a consolidation centre when freight needs to be grouped.

Booking and customs

The booking systems build on earlier digital booking forms and data exchange tools, but those efforts delivered only limited automation. Agent-based systems are now removing manual handling from booking requests submitted by suppliers on behalf of customers.

"We have more work to do automating all the steps for booking, but this is already a major leap forward. Before agentic AI, we'd developed digital booking forms and data exchange setups with customers, but over the course of about 10 years achieved only about 5% automation for ocean and air booking requests. Why was that such a tough hill to climb? Primarily because you quote your customer, then it's their suppliers booking with you. A customer might have 50 suppliers. With our agentic AI, all those booking requests no longer need to be handled manually," said Mike Neill, Chief Technology Officer.

In customs brokerage, the new systems now handle more than four dozen document types from shippers, carriers and government agencies. Documents are split, classified and attached to shipments, while another agent extracts key data and checks whether any items are missing.

Time spent on customs processing has so far been reduced by 23%, allowing customs brokers to focus on validation and compliance work. The company has also built hundreds of proprietary AI agents since 2023.

"When we built the first of our hundreds of proprietary AI agents in 2023, we were at the beginning of our company's transformation. We continue making disciplined choices about where we deploy Lean AI. Our AI agents continue to operate on 100 trillion data points and a context layer of customer-specific information that simply cannot be replicated elsewhere. While our 450 in-house software engineers and data scientists are still innovating in our trucking and 4PL businesses, now we're using those advantages to widen our competitive moat in global forwarding," said Arun Rajan, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer.