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: filing ISFs, creating lots, quoting, and auditing. You keep control; the agents do the prep, and your team approves every record they draft.
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, the team keeps the judgment, and the operation runs the volume of a much larger one without adding a desk.
30 min → seconds
Lot creation, per shipment, across 25+ jobs a week at a US import forwarder.
15 min → seconds
ISF prep, per shipment, across 20 filings a week, reviewed and submitted by a person.
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, produces the finished record, and hands it to a person to approve. That last step is the definition, not a limitation. 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 drafted filing or a created lot. If you are evaluating vendors, we wrote up how to tell the difference before you sign.
Which jobs do the agents take?
File the ISF
The ISF agent reads the worksheet, resolves the 10+2, and drafts the filing for your team to submit. The filing carries your team's filer code, which is exactly why a person reviews every one.
Create the lot
The order entry agent turns a bill of lading and house bill into a complete lot in your TMS, charge lines included, staged for a person to accept. Ocean import, domestic, and the lanes in between.
Quote the freight
The quote agent turns an inbound inquiry into a drafted quote, priced from your carrier rates, ready for your team to review and send.
Audit the work
The audit and finance agents re-check filings against source documents and reconcile job charges against vendor invoices, flagging anything worth a second look before a customer finds it.
Start with the agent that hurts most and expand as you need. Everything works on top of the TMS you already run, and your team approves every record the agents draft before it goes anywhere. 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. | Day one, sharper every week from your team's corrections. |
| 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. | The same seconds per record at any volume. |
| Where judgment lives | Split between keying and deciding. | With your team. The drafting agents prep; a person approves every record they draft. |
What does the first month look like?
1 · Pick the job
ISF filing, order entry, or quoting: the one that costs your team the most hours today. That agent goes first, as a small paid pilot on real work.
2 · Run it on real shipments
The agent works your actual inbox from day one. Your team reviews its drafts, corrects what it gets wrong, and every correction becomes a rule it keeps.
3 · Expand when it has earned it
Add the next agent when the first one has paid for itself in hours. Most of the gain lands in the first week; the compounding comes after.
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 ISF agent reads the 10+2 worksheet and drafts the filing for your team to submit. The order entry agent reads the bills and creates the lot in your TMS with charge lines. The quote agent prices an inbound inquiry from your rates. The audit and finance agents re-check filings and reconcile charges. At the US import forwarder running them in production, that work went from about 30 minutes per lot and 15 minutes per ISF to seconds, with a person approving every record.
Do we have to replace our TMS?
No. TIO sits between your inbox and the TMS you already run, and your TMS stays the system of record. The agents read the documents that arrive by email, do the prep, and stage a finished record for a person to accept into that system. There is no migration and no new screen for your team to learn.
Does anything get filed or sent without a person?
No. Every filing and every TMS write goes through your team first. The agents carry the work to a finished draft, and a named person reviews and approves it before it is filed, sent, or written. For customs, the filer of record reviews and submits exactly as before. That is how the system is built, not a setting.
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?
Day one, and they sharpen 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 filing conventions. Most of the gain lands in the first week, and the agent 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.
Book a demo