Logistics firm CH Robinson is using AI to solve missed pickup problems in less-than-truckload (LTL) shipping.

The AI agents are tracking down missed pickups and using reasoning to determine how to keep freight moving. They’re also collecting and analysing previously unavailable data that LTL carriers are using to improve their technology, scheduling and operations.

This innovation has created a major leap in efficiency: 95% of checks on missed LTL pickups have been automated, saving over 350 hours of manual work per day. Shippers’ freight moves up to a day faster. Return trips to pick up missed freight have been reduced by 42%.

With one truck carrying freight from up to 20 different shippers, LTL shipping requires complex coordination to pick it all up, take it to a terminal and recombine it on other trucks with other freight heading the same direction. Across the industry, that leads to missed pickups and costly delays that ripple through LTL networks.

“A missed pickup isn’t just a minor inconvenience,” said Greg West, CH Robinson vice president. “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.”

At CH Robinson, which claims to move more LTL freight than any other 3PL in North America, the AI agents are resolving hundreds of shipments a day across more than 11,000 customers so far.

“Before this transformational tech, teams of people spent over half the day chasing missed pickups, manually checking carrier web sites, making calls, recording updates and notifying customers,” said West. “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.”

To make this speed and precision possible, the AI agent calls carriers about missed pickups and then another AI agent decides what steps to take. Because the two agents working together can make 100 calls and 100 decisions simultaneously, missed pickups are resolved faster, freight gets on the road faster, and shippers and their receivers get visibility to their freight sooner without hours of manual intervention. The AI agents also give carriers problem-solving capabilities they never had before.

“Sharing our new missed-pickup data with carriers every day allows them to see which electronic communications could be improved, isolate operational issues to particular terminals and optimise their scheduling,” said West. “Having more efficient LTL networks nationwide benefits our employees, carriers and customers, and everybody else who uses LTL shipping.”

Vice president Mark Albrecht called it a perfect demonstration of lean AI.

“We don’t just throw AI at anything and everything,” Albrecht said. “It’s not a hobby for us. We use AI agents only where they can deliver tangible business results. 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.”

Minnesota-based CH Robinson (chrobinson.com) is used by 83,000 customers and 450,000 carriers, managing 37 million shipments annually, representing $23bn in freight.