CH Robinson expands AI use for LTL quotes, capacity acquisition

Dive Brief:

• C.H. Robinson’s AI capabilities can now offer price quotes for less-than-truckload shipments, acquire trucking capacity and set appointments for pickup and delivery, according to an April 16 press release.
• Since the company added LTL freight to its quoting agent, there has been a 30% jump in LTL quotes delivered by AI every month, Mark Albrecht, VP for artificial intelligence, said in the release. The AI can also distinguish when a shipper is asking for quotes on truckload and LTL freight, he added.
• “LTL has also been a factor in growing the number of emailed load tenders that no longer have to be manually processed and the number of customers who are benefiting,” per the release.

Dive Insight:

C.H. Robinson's generative AI agents have performed over 3 million shipping tasks, reducing customers’ speed-to-market from hours to seconds, according to the release.

“Instead of waiting up to four hours for a person to get to their shipment in an email queue, over 5,200 customers are getting their loads accepted in under 90 seconds,” Albrecht said.

The company’s AI technology can also extract information from carriers' emails offering capacity. It can draw out details on available trucks and helps provide real-time data on capacity as well as supply tracking updates for customers.

“If a carrier emails us that they’ll have an empty truck Wednesday in Dallas and another Thursday in Chicago, the faster we get that information on system, the faster our load-matching platform notifies the carrier of ideal loads for their backhaul and the faster our customers’ freight hits the road,” Albrecht said.

C.H. Robinson is not a newcomer in adopting AI to bolster productivity.

In 2024, the freight broker announced various efforts to automate its logistics management processes. The tasks tapping into AI include responding to emailed quote requests and executing touchless appointments.

C.H. Robinson CEO Dave Bozeman told Trucking Dive last year that technology was a big part of the company’s strategy to be more efficient throughout the order process, from quoting to tracking.

C.H. Robinson isn’t alone in adopting AI in various parts of operations. ITS Logistics has used AI to pull data from shipper orders to determine where trailers should be located. As of March, the company had not yet been using the technology to provide shipper pricing recommendations, but it was next on its agenda, Peter Weis, CIO and SVP of supply chain services at ITS Logistics, told Trucking Dive.