The delivery order arrives by email. An agent enters it.
A TIO agent reads the delivery order, creates the entry in the system you already run with charge lines attached, and hands it to your team to accept. It starts on day one and learns your customers from every correction.
What does a 3PL actually lose to data entry?
Hours, in pieces small enough that nobody logs them. A delivery order lands in a shared inbox. Someone opens it, reads the consignee, the ship-to, the piece count, the weight, the special instructions, then switches to the system and types it in, field by field. Then the charge lines. Then the next one. None of it is hard, and all of it is slow, and it scales with the number of orders rather than with the size of the team.
The same shape of work runs at a freight forwarder, in different paperwork. TIO's agents are in production at a US import forwarder today, where lot creation ran about 30 minutes a job by hand and ISF filing about 15 minutes a filing. Across 25+ jobs and 20 filings a week, that was roughly two days of one person's week spent reading documents and typing their contents into fields. The agents took both to seconds, with a person approving every record. A 3PL keying delivery orders has the same problem in different documents.
How does the order entry agent handle a delivery order?
It reads the document, builds the entry, and stops before the write. The loop runs in five steps:
The document arrives as it always has
A delivery order, bill of lading, packing list, or rate confirmation lands in the inbox your team already uses. No forwarding rules to set up, no portal for your customer to learn.
The agent reads it
It works from the document rather than a template, including scanned PDFs, so a new customer's format does not break it. It resolves the parties, the ship-to, piece counts, weights, and dimensions.
It builds the entry
The agent creates the entry in your system with the charge lines attached, carrying the job to a finished record rather than handing you a spreadsheet to key in.
Your team accepts it
A person reviews the draft against the source document and accepts it. Nothing writes on its own. Every external write goes through your team.
Your correction becomes a rule
Fix a consignee once and the agent keeps it. Your customers, your conventions, the way your team writes a reference number. The rule applies on the next document, not after a training cycle.
How is this different from the usual answers?
Every 3PL has tried to solve entry volume. Here is where an agent sits against the alternatives:
| What it does | Where it stops | |
|---|---|---|
| Another hire | Keys the entries correctly | Cost scales one-for-one with order volume, and the next growth step needs the next hire |
| Offshore data entry | Moves the keystrokes off your team | The errors, the latency, and the management overhead stay with you |
| OCR / scanning | Extracts text from a known template | Hands you fields to key in, and an unfamiliar format breaks it |
| A TIO agent | Reads any format and builds the finished entry with charge lines | Stops at your team, on purpose. A person accepts every write |
Which agents does a 3PL actually use?
Start with the one that removes the most hours today and add the others as the work demands them.
Order entry
Reads the delivery order or bill of lading and creates the entry in your system with charge lines, ready for your team to accept. This is usually the first agent a 3PL puts to work.
Quoting
Turns an inbound rate inquiry into a drafted quote, priced from your carrier rates, ready for a person to review and send.
Finance audit
Reconciles the charge lines on the job against the vendor invoice and flags the gaps before they cost you margin.
Customs, if you touch it
If your operation handles import freight, the ISF 10+2 agent drafts the filing for a licensed filer on your team to submit. Nothing files on its own.
Every agent works on top of the system you already run and hands its work to a person. Meet the agents →
Straight answers.
What do AI agents do for a 3PL?
An AI agent reads the inbound delivery order or shipping document, pulls out the parties, addresses, piece counts, weights, and charges, and creates the entry in the system you already run, with charge lines attached. A person on your team reviews and accepts it. In production at a US import freight forwarder, the same agent took entry work from about 30 minutes per job to seconds across 25+ jobs a week.
Do I have to replace my TMS or WMS to use AI agents?
No. TIO connects to the system you already run through its API and does not replace it. Your system stays the system of record. The agents sit between your inbox and that system, do the prep, and stage the entry for a person to accept. There is no migration and no new screen for your team to learn.
How is this different from OCR or a document scanner?
OCR extracts text and hands you fields to key in yourself. It also needs a consistent template, and a delivery order from a new customer in an unfamiliar format breaks it. A TIO agent reads the document for meaning rather than position, carries the work to a finished entry with charge lines, and flags what it is unsure of instead of guessing.
How long before an agent is useful on my delivery orders?
Day one, and it sharpens from there. There is no training project and no dataset to assemble first. Every correction your team makes becomes a rule the agent keeps: your customers, your consignees, your conventions. That rule applies on the next document rather than after a future training cycle, so most of the gain lands inside the first week.
Does an agent ever create an entry without a person approving it?
No. Every external write goes through your team. The agent stages a finished draft and a named person accepts it, on every entry, every time. That is how the system is built, not a setting you turn on.
See it on your own shipments.
Twenty minutes, no setup. Bring a real document and watch an agent take it to a finished draft while you’re on the call.
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