C.H. Robinson Extends AI Agents to Ocean, Air Freight and Customs

C.H. Robinson announced on 10 November the expansion of its AI agent system from trucking into ocean freight, air freight, and US customs brokerage. According to figures cited by the company, quote generation times for air and ocean shipments have fallen from one to three days to two to three minutes, with more than 80,000 quotes recorded for 3,600 customers. Customs processing time has dropped by 23 percent, per company figures, through agents that split, classify, and extract data from shipments and check completeness across more than 50 document types.

The results indicate that document automation combined with AI agents is producing measurable returns in the freight forwarding industry. They also raise the benchmark for quotation response times across the sector: forwarders without comparable automation may face lower win rates as customers increasingly expect rapid responses.

C.H. Robinson, one of the world's largest third-party logistics providers, had previously deployed AI agents in its trucking operations before extending the system to the new transport modes.