Press release
C.H. Robinson Launches AI Agents to Combat Industrywide Problem of Missed LTL Pickups
The logistics provider’s new tech and data are making LTL carrier networks more efficient – eliminating unnecessary trips and giving shippers better service
About this update from C.h. Robinson Worldwide, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"\nThe logistics provider’s new tech and data are making LTL carrier networks more efficient – eliminating unnecessary trips and giving shippers better service and earlier visibility\n\n\n EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--\nC.H. Robinson, the global leader in Lean AI supply chains, is using artificial intelligence to ease a widespread pain point in less-than-truckload shipping: missed pickups. New AI agents are tracking down missed pickups and using advanced reasoning to determine how to keep freight moving. They’re also collecting and analyzing previously unavailable data that LTL carriers are now using to improve their technology, scheduling and operations.\n\n\nThis 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. Unnecessary return trips to pick up missed freight have been reduced by 42% – a win for carriers and shippers.\n\n\nWith 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.\n\n\n“A missed pickup isn’t just a minor inconvenience,” said Greg West, Vice President for LTL. “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.”\n\n\nAt C.H. Robinson, which moves more LTL freight than any other 3PL in North America, the new AI agents are resolving hundreds of shipments a day across more than 11,000 customers so far.\n\n\n“Before this transformational tech, teams of people spent over half the day chasing missed pickups – manually checking carrier websites, 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 u...