Logistics / Third-party logistics
C.H. Robinson: Calculating ocean and air freight price quotes and sending them to customers
- Company
- C.H. Robinson
- Country
- United States
- Adoption stage
- In operation
- Source published
- Date basis
- The date the source was published. It can differ from the date adoption started.
- How the source was checked
- Read the full source text
The work problem
C.H. Robinson's ocean freight quoting involved manually checking origin and destination ports, terminal fees and inland routing together. Terminal fees change continually, and shippers sometimes leave the port unspecified, requiring staff in different time zones to gather external information. The company said an air quote previously took a day and an ocean quote two to three days.
Technology and data
The company built multiple AI agents and subagents to interpret shipper requests, obtain external information and decide routing. Agents check terminal websites and fee-notice emails. When a port is unspecified, they use pickup locations and company data to suggest ports, inland transport modes and consolidation centers. The company says AI augments experts while retaining human oversight and customer-specific attention.
Results
In its October 26, 2026 release, C.H. Robinson said AI had calculated and delivered over 80,000 quotes for more than 3,600 customers and cut ocean and air quote times to two to three minutes. The capability started with ocean less-than-container-load quotes for U.S. and Canadian customers and expanded to full containers, air cargo and markets including Mexico and Europe. The company says earlier information helps customers respond to shipping changes and disruptions.
Limits and open questions
The source does not disclose quote accuracy or the rate of staff corrections. Chinese customers are in a pilot, and expansion to some other regions remained a future plan at publication.
Sources
- C.H. Robinson Debuts Lean AI for Ocean Shipping, Air Freight and CustomsC.H. Robinson, Accessed
Compiled from public sources. These are not results from ATF Works customers.