How one Minnesota Fortune 500 company is using industry-leading AI to respond faster to customers

C.H. Robinson says it has made a major advance in using AI to process freight shipments.

In May, the Eden Prairie-based logistics giant announced how it was using artificial intelligence to read emailed freight orders and provide automated price quotes. Now the technology also can accept a load, set appointments for pickup and delivery, and check on loads in transit.

“Within a few short months, we created new models to automate more shipping steps and have already implemented them at scale,” said Arun Rajan, the company’s chief strategy and innovation officer, in a news release. “This a major efficiency breakthrough for the industry and for supply chains around the world.”

A year ago, it would take C.H. Robinson about four hours to process an emailed request for transit. Now it can be done in 90 seconds, and more than one can be done at a time.

Company officials say they’ve used AI to automate up to 10,000 emailed transactions per day, saving hundreds of hours of manual labor that can now be applied to other problem-solving.

“An emailed load tender might only say, ‘I have a load for Tuesday’ because the shipper knows we know what they ship on Tuesdays. Or it could contain thousands of words about 20 loads in a PDF attachment with handwritten notes on it,” said Mark Albrecht, the company’s vice president for artificial intelligence. “Our tech can connect details in different parts of the email, discern what’s missing, go fill in the blanks and take action.”

Freight shipments have always been more complicated than passengers hailing a lift on a rideshare platform. Many digital-only logistics companies that have entered the industry have struggled to automate a more complex process.

C.H. Robinson developed the AI processes in-house based on the large trove of data it has on shipments and routes gathered over years and the specialized expertise developed from customers’ unique and often complex needs.

Shippers already integrated on C.H. Robinson’s Navisphere platform have benefited from automated service for years, but many shippers still preferred communicating via email.

C.H. Robinson has also applied AI to additional tasks, including determining whether a load is best suited for a truckload or less-than-truckload delivery, and the best ways to load various commodities on pallets for shipping.

Since C.H. Robinson Chief Executive Dave Bozeman started 15 months ago, he has preached lean management principles and the need to reduce the amount of manual touches on routine shipping requests, reduce waste and innovate faster.

With the freight market still depressed, those principles have become more important.

The company said Wednesday that for the quarter ended Sept. 30, its earnings were up 18.6% to $97.2 million, or 80 cents a share. Revenue grew 7% to $4.6 billion.

“I’m pleased with our third-quarter results that reflect continued improvement in our execution, as we continue to deploy our new operating model,” Bozeman said in the earnings news release. “We are raising the bar, even in a historically prolonged freight recession, with strong execution and disciplined volume growth across divisions while delivering exceptional service for our customers and carriers.”