Case study · Logistics
38% faster exception detection. 6.7-month payback.
A 3PL moving 520K shipments a year across 180 carriers consolidated exception management, customer comms, freight audit, and cross-border documents into a single agent workflow. Operators stopped chasing tickets; customers stopped finding out about delays from the carrier first.
- Industry
- 3PL / managed transportation
- Region
- North America (US + Canada + MX cross-border)
- Size
- ~520K shipments / year, 180+ carriers
- Stack
- TMS · EDI · project44 · Snowflake · Claude
- Engagement
- 12 weeks build + 6 weeks customer rollout
Results
Measured at 12-month milestone.
38%
Reduction in time-to-detect shipment exceptions
24%
Lift in customer-comms NPS on proactive notifications
17%
Drop in accessorial-charge claim leakage
6.7mo
Payback period
The challenge
Visibility was integrated. Action on it wasn't.
- 01
Multi-carrier visibility was technically integrated (project44 was in place) but exception management was still manual — operators worked tickets created hours after the actual exception event because nobody was watching the feed in real time.
- 02
Customer communications on exceptions were inconsistent. Different ops people sent different messages, sometimes with stale data, sometimes too late. Customers caught the carrier's tracking page before the 3PL's notification.
- 03
Accessorial charges from carriers were over-billing by an estimated 15-20% based on a manual audit sample, but the volume was too high to audit comprehensively. Money was leaking.
- 04
Cross-border shipments (US-MX especially) had document-handling bottlenecks at customs that delayed shipments and ate margin on time-sensitive lanes.
The solution
Four capabilities of the visibility agent.
01
Real-time exception detection agent
Continuously reconciles EDI 214/990, carrier APIs, GPS feeds, and TMS appointment data. Detects exceptions (in-transit delay > threshold, missed PUDD, dock refusal, lane deviation) at the moment of the underlying event. Routes to operators with full context — what happened, what changes, what the customer needs to know.
02
Customer-facing comms drafting
On confirmed exceptions, the agent drafts the customer notification in the 3PL's voice — what happened, revised ETA, recommended action, who to contact. Operators review and send (or edit and send). Cuts a 15-minute manual comms task to under 2 minutes and standardizes message quality.
03
Accessorial-invoice audit
Cross-references inbound carrier invoices against the shipment record, accessorial-fee schedule, and detention/demurrage thresholds. Flags discrepancies for billing-audit review, auto-approves clean invoices, and tracks recovery patterns over time per carrier. Recovered ~5% of total freight spend in the first 12 months.
04
Cross-border document agent
Reads commercial invoices, BOLs, certificates of origin, and customs forms; extracts the structured data, classifies against HTS, flags valuation or origin discrepancies before customs entry. Customs brokers review and submit — they don't draft from scratch. Cut cross-border processing from hours to under 30 minutes per shipment.
"Our customers used to learn about delays from their carrier's tracking page. Now they hear from us first, with a revised ETA and a clear next step. That's worth more than the accessorial recovery, frankly."
VP Operations
3PL / Managed Transportation Provider
Related services
AI Agent Development →Production agents for asset-heavy and freight-heavy operations, including EDI/API normalization and TMS integration. From $80,000.