Freight broker C.H. Robinson is now using artificial intelligence (AI) agents to perform work in ocean shipping, air freight, and customs brokerage, saying that the new technology brings substantial speed-to-market gains, precision, and agility to customers’ supply chains without sacrificing human oversight or personal attention.
According to the company, the move is significant because it shows an expansion of C.H. Robinson’s “Lean AI” capabilities into freight forwarding, for the benefit of more customers, and into work so complex that a single shipping task can require over a dozen AI agents working in tandem.
The new agents have been assigned to do work including:
- Price-quoting for ocean and air cargo: AI has determined and delivered over 80,000 price quotes for over 3,600 customers. Quotes that used to take a day for an air shipment and two to three days for an ocean shipment now take two to three minutes.
- Ocean booking: AI has begun to manage the thousands of booking requests C.H. Robinson receives every week.
- Customs: AI helps with the dozens of documents and highly detailed processes required for an international shipment to clear U.S. Customs – work that has only gotten more labor-intensive with new trade agreements, layers of new tariffs, and stricter compliance rules.
“As we’ve brought our AI playbook to global forwarding, the benefits keep compounding,” said Mike Short, President of Global Forwarding. “Customers have information they need sooner. Data is more consistent. Processes are more predictable. When plans change or disruptions occur, customers can more quickly evaluate a new routing, mode of shipping, schedule, or price. 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 example, C.H. Robinson uses one set of AI agents to manage requests for ocean bookings. They launched in China in August, will roll out to the rest of Asia in Q4, and are expected to be live globally in Q1 2027. One of those AI agents enhances booking requests with customer-specific context, ensuring the other agents operate with maximum efficiency while still taking into account individual customer preferences, requirements and procedures for their shipments.
“We have more work to do automating all the steps for booking, but this is already a major leap forward,” said Mike Neill, C.H. Robinson’s Chief Technology Officer. “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.”
