One inbox. Every job. A named agent on each one.
A forwarder’s inbox holds instructions from every principal at once. TIO gives you AI agents that read that inbox, do the back-office prep, and hand each record to your team to approve.
The inbox is where the work arrives, and where it stalls.
Every principal, carrier, and agent emails the same inbox. Someone has to read each message, figure out which job it belongs to, and key the data into the TMS you already run. At a light queue one operator keeps up. Grow it, and the team stops moving freight and starts sorting mail. Hiring another person buys time, not leverage.
One agent per job function, end to end.
ISF agent
Reads the worksheet, resolves the 10+2 parties, and drafts the filing for your team to submit.
Order entry agent
Turns a bill of lading and house bill into a complete lot in the TMS you already run, charge lines included, for your team to accept.
Audit agent
Re-checks filed records against the source documents and flags any field that does not tie out.
Finance agent
Reconciles the job charges against the vendor invoice and corrects the mismatched charge items before a billing error reaches the customer.
Quote agent
Turns an inbound rate inquiry into a drafted quote, priced from your rates, ready for a person to send.
Start with the agent that hurts most and add the rest as you go. Every agent works on top of the TMS you already run, and you choose per agent whether a person approves each record before it lands or the agent posts it on its own. Customs filing always keeps a human filer.
Every principal isolated, every filing reviewed.
Each job, rate history, and document is scoped to its principal. A status answer for one client never surfaces another client’s data. The agents do the prep; you decide per agent whether your team approves each record or the agent acts on its own. A customs ISF is always filed by a person.
Straight answers.
What is an AI agent workforce for a freight forwarder?
A roster of named AI agents, each doing one back-office job a person does by hand today: the ISF agent drafts the 10+2 filing, the order entry agent creates the lot in your TMS with charge lines, the quote agent prices inbound freight, the audit agent re-checks the work. At the US import forwarder running them in production, lot creation went from about 30 minutes to seconds and ISF prep from about 15 minutes to seconds, with a person approving each record they draft.
Do the agents replace our TMS or our team?
Neither. Your TMS stays the system of record and your team keeps every decision. The agents sit between the inbox and the TMS: they read the documents, do the prep, and stage a finished record. You choose per agent whether a named person approves that record or the agent acts on its own; a customs ISF is always filed by a person, in either mode. A team of 3 to 50 people keeps the judgment and loses the keying.
Do we run every agent from day one?
No. Start with one agent on the job that costs the most hours, usually ISF filing or order entry, as a small paid pilot on real shipments. Most of the gain lands in the first week. Add the second agent when the first has paid for itself in hours; the forwarder in production got roughly 17.5 hours a week back across the roster.
How do the agents learn our way of working?
From your corrections. Every fix your team makes during review becomes a rule the agent keeps: your customers, your consignees, your charge codes, your filing conventions. There is no training project and no dataset to assemble first; the agent works your real inbox from day 1 and is measurably sharper in month two than in week one.
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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