Your team moves freight. The agents handle the coordination.
TIO gives a small forwarding team AI agents that do the back-office jobs done by hand today: creating lots, booking payables, auditing finished work, and drafting customs filing data. Each action has its own setting, and a person files every customs filing.
Freight forwarders: the work, one job at a time.
Order Entry Agent
Reads the bills and the packing list and creates the lot or delivery order in your TMS, charge lines included.
- On its own
- Creates the record and sends it for review
- Goes to a person
- A party it cannot match, a document that contradicts another
- Status
- In production at a US import forwarder
Finance Agent
Matches each line of a vendor invoice to the job’s charges and books the payable. It does not pay.
- On its own
- Books lines that match, for the vendors you have approved
- Goes to a person
- A line with no matching charge, a duplicate invoice number
- Status
- In production at a US import forwarder
Audit Agent
Re-checks finished records against their source documents and reports each difference with its cause.
- On its own
- Runs on a schedule and reports. It does not change a record
- Goes to a person
- Every difference goes to a person
- Status
- In production at a US import forwarder
Tracking Agent
Follows each shipment, tells the customer when something real changes, and sends the proof of delivery.
- On its own
- Sends status and documents for a booked shipment
- Goes to a person
- A late pickup, a cancellation on or after pickup day, a date change in your TMS without your reply
- Status
- In production at a US trucking agency and a US import forwarder
Example panels with sample steps on illustrative footage. Not a live feed.
Why does growth mean more data entry, not more margin?
Every new lane and every new customer means more emails to read, more worksheets to key, more filings to get out on time. A lean team ends up spending its day moving data from the inbox into the TMS instead of moving freight. The cost curve runs straight through headcount: twice the shipments means twice the keying, which means another ops hire, recruiting and ramp included. The usual answer is to make that hire. TIO is the other answer: agents take the keying, and the team keeps the judgment.
30 min → seconds
Lot creation, per shipment, across 25+ jobs a week at a US import forwarder.
12 min → 12 sec
LTL quote reply, median, at a US trucking agency running the quote agents.
About two days a week
Team time back, every week, from removing the keying. The full story →
What is an AI agent, for a forwarder?
An AI agent is software that finishes a task rather than assisting with one: it starts itself when a shipment email arrives, reads the documents, matches them against your jobs, parties, and references, and produces the finished record. What happens next is set for each action. The record runs on its own inside your rules, goes to a person for review, or waits for a person’s reply. The distinction from the document tools freight has had for years is where the work stops. Extraction software hands back a screen of fields for someone to key. An agent hands back a created lot or a drafted filing. If you are evaluating vendors, we wrote up how to tell the difference before you sign.
Which jobs do the agents take?
Draft the customs filing
An agent prepares filing data from the shipping documents as a draft. A licensed person on your team reviews and files it. TIO never files, and classification advice stays with a licensed person.
Create the lot
The order entry agent reads the bill of lading, house bill and packing list and creates the lot in your TMS, charge lines included. It then sends a review email that shows every field. Ocean, air and domestic lots.
Quote the freight
Quote agents price LTL and truckload requests and reply in the customer’s thread. They run today at a US trucking agency, not yet at a forwarder. For a forwarder, we scope quoting first.
Audit the work
The audit agent re-checks finished records against their source documents and reports each difference with its cause. The finance agent matches each line of a vendor invoice to the job’s charges and lists the lines that do not match. For duty, see the weekly HTS code and duty rate audit.
Start with the agent that hurts most and expand as you need. Your TMS stays the system of record. Each action has its own setting: it runs on its own, goes to your team for review, or waits for your team’s reply. Meet the agents →
How does an agent compare to the next ops hire?
| Another ops hire | A TIO agent | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to productive | Recruiting, then weeks of ramp on your conventions. | A scoped pilot on your own documents. Timing depends on your TMS and the job. Your team’s corrections become rules for your operation. |
| Cost shape | A salary that scales with volume steps. | Per agent, a fraction of the role it does. Not per seat. |
| Peak season | Overtime, backlog, or a temp who needs training. | Lot creation takes seconds per record, so keying does not build a backlog. |
| Where judgment lives | Split between keying and deciding. | With your team. Agents prep and create the record. Anything outside your rules goes to a person, and a person files every customs filing. |
How does a first agent start?
1 · Pick the job
Order entry, payables or audit: the one that costs your team the most hours today. That agent goes first, as a small paid pilot on your own documents.
2 · Run it on real shipments
The agent goes live one action at a time, when it matches your team’s work on real shipments. Your team reviews what it creates. When your team corrects it, TIO turns the correction into a rule for your operation.
3 · Expand when it has earned it
Add the next agent when the first one has paid for itself in hours.
Straight answers.
What do AI agents actually do for a freight forwarder?
Each agent does one back-office job a person does by hand today. The order entry agent reads the bills and creates the lot in your TMS with charge lines, then sends a review email that shows every field. The finance agent matches vendor invoice lines to the job’s charges and books the payable. It does not pay. The audit agent re-checks finished records against their source documents. Quote agents run today at a US trucking agency, and quoting is scoped first for a forwarder. At the US import forwarder running order entry in production, lot creation went from about 30 minutes per lot to seconds.
Do we have to replace our TMS?
No. Your TMS stays the system of record. TIO works through an adapter built for your TMS, and adapters are in production for two TMS platforms. For any other system, we first check what it lets an agent read and write. The order entry agent creates the lot in your TMS and sends a review email that shows every field.
Does anything get filed or sent without a person?
A customs filing is never filed by TIO. An agent prepares it as a draft, and a person on your team reviews and files it. For everything else, each action has its own setting. It runs on its own inside your rules, it goes to your team for review, or it waits for a person’s reply. Anything outside your rules goes to a person with the facts attached. TMS write permissions are configured by action and customer, and the agent write-event journal is protected from application edits and deletion.
How big does a forwarder need to be for this to make sense?
The agents are built for small, lean teams, roughly 3 to 50 people, where the founder or ops manager still touches the inbox personally. The pricing follows the same logic: per agent, a fraction of the ops hire it replaces, not a per-seat license across the team. Start with one agent on the job that costs the most hours and expand when it has earned it.
How long until the agents are useful?
A first agent starts as a scoped pilot on your own documents. What takes time is the adapter for your TMS and your rules for the job, so timing depends on your TMS and the job. The agent goes live one action at a time, when it matches your team’s work on real shipments. When your team corrects an agent, TIO turns the correction into a rule for your operation: your customers, your consignees, your conventions. TIO’s team writes each rule with you. It is a rule, not model training.
Where the work happens.
All solutions
See it on your own shipments.
Bring a real document and watch an agent take it to a finished draft while you’re on the call.
Book a demo