Aranda & Co. / Who we work with

AI for logistics companies, freight brokers and 3PLs

This page is for the owner of a freight brokerage or a 3PL with 10 to 200 people who has started getting the AI pitch. By now it probably sounds familiar: an agent that works your inbox and runs your check calls, a quote back in under a minute, live in a couple of days, and a headline multiple on time or headcount that no named customer stands behind. The demo looks good, but it leaves out the data cleanup and the TMS integration, which is where the work is, and nobody shows you an error rate.

What we do instead is a fixed-fee assessment. For two to three weeks we sit with the people on your phones and in your inbox, and we follow where the hours go and what they cost. Then we hand you a ranked list and a 90-day plan that is yours whether or not we keep working together.

Book 20 minutes How it runs here

What owners ask us for

Sorting the shared inbox

Start with one inbox, the shared ops mailbox. Quote requests and tenders land there next to tracking questions and carrier paperwork, and someone reads every one. The first build tags each email by type and routes it to the right rep with a drafted reply to send. We'd time how long an email waits before a person touches it and check how often the routing is wrong.

Turning a rate request into a quote

A spot request comes in by email with the lane and the dates buried in the thread, and a rep rebuilds it by hand before pricing it. The tool pulls those fields into a draft quote with the rate source shown, for the rep to approve or change before it goes out. Turnaround from request to quote goes on the scorecard, along with how often the rep changes the draft.

Check calls and tracking updates

Loads with a stale status at the end of the day are where we'd start counting. Afternoons go to calling drivers for a location and typing it into the TMS. A first pass reads the tracking feeds you already pay for and hands the rep a list of only the loads with no fresh update, so the calls go where they're needed. The second count is how many calls each load takes.

Carrier vetting and onboarding

Setting up a new carrier means pulling authority and insurance records from several places and spotting the things that don't match. The agent assembles the packet and flags the mismatches, such as a remit-to change or a phone number that doesn't match the file, while a person makes the decision and the verification call. We'd measure packet assembly time and how many flags turned out to be real.

Catching exceptions before the customer calls

An overnight check of the TMS and the tracking feed puts a short list of exceptions in front of the account manager every morning. Without that list, a late pickup or a missed appointment usually surfaces when the customer emails about it. The test is how many exceptions we found first versus how many the customer did.

Matching carrier invoices to rate confirmations

Carrier invoices arrive with accessorials that may or may not be on the rate confirmation, and the billing clerk lines them up by hand. Software pairs each invoice to its rate con and lists the differences. Deciding what to pay stays with the clerk. We'd judge it on days from delivery to carrier payment and on how many invoices end in a dispute.

How it runs here

AI assessment

In a brokerage or a 3PL the assessment means sitting with carrier sales, the account managers, dispatch and billing, plus whoever owns the TMS, for two to three weeks. We follow an email from arrival to booked load and a load from tender to paid invoice, timing where the hours go and where money leaks through detention and re-keying. Then we look at the data itself: what lives in the TMS and what lives everywhere else, in email and in the spreadsheets next to it, because that decides what can be automated first and what has to be cleaned up before anything can.

Weeks 1 to 3

The 90-day plan

What usually makes the first 90 days in a brokerage is the work where a wrong answer is cheap to catch: inbox tagging and drafted replies, an exception list each morning, invoice matching for the billing clerk, and a written rule for which instructions an agent may act on alone. The plan also schedules the AI-use policy, written so your reps can read it in one sitting. What waits is anything that talks to a carrier in your name or changes a delivery instruction on its own, along with any customer-facing bot. Those come after the data is clean and the controls are tested, and some of them never make the list.

Yours to keep

Fractional Chief AI Officer

Week to week the retainer is us running the plan. We shortlist the builders for any TMS integration and write their scopes, hold them to the dates, and sit with the reps while the first version goes in. You get the one-page scorecard every week and a leadership review once a month. The policy work in this vertical is specific: a second-channel rule for reroutes and remit-to changes, a named person who can pull the agent's mailbox access if a login is compromised and a test of that before go-live, a carrier verification script that keeps a person on the call, and a read of every vendor contract for what they owe you when the agent is wrong.

Monthly

What you get

Interviews with the people who do the work
Your top five uses for AI, ranked by payback
A 90-day plan with a shortlist of tools and builders
A one-page weekly scorecard with owner, due date and status
A plain-English AI-use policy
A monthly leadership review

Tools we'd look at first: Gmail, MCP, Google Sheets, WhatsApp.

Fixed fee for the assessment, agreed before we start. Monthly retainer after, if it fits.

Where it goes wrong

Automated check calls can be fooled by the same AI the criminals use

Fraud rings use AI-generated voices and synthetic identities to get past carrier verification calls, and brokerages now get calls from AI bots on the carrier side. The advice from the people FreightWaves quoted: ask the driver about the weather where they are right now, because routine questions are what the bots are built to answer.

Source: AI deepfakes fueling digitally-enabled crime wave in the freight industry (FreightWaves, Oct 22, 2025)

A hijacked login becomes a mass event at machine speed

Scammers hack a carrier's email, mine old sent mail for insurance and authority documents, then book loads from the carrier's own address while intercepting the broker's replies. One broker had over 400 loads posted in their name in an hour; an agent that posts loads needs the same identity controls as a person.

Source: Impersonation Attacks Are Here To Stay (FreightWaves, Sep 10, 2025)

Email agents act on a channel criminals already use

CargoNet reports criminals entering trusted freight channels through compromised carrier accounts, email systems, business phones and compliance platforms, sometimes changing delivery instructions after a legitimate carrier has the load. CargoNet doesn't discuss AI; our inference is that an email agent that executes a reroute without a second channel widens that window.

Source: CargoNet tracks $31.8M in Labor Day thefts as criminals breach trusted freight accounts (FreightWaves, Sep 7, 2026)

Questions to ask any vendor, including us

When your voice agent verifies a carrier, what does it ask that a scripted bot can't answer, and can you show us a call where it caught an impersonator?
Which inbound instructions will the email agent act on by itself, a reroute or a remit-to change for example, and which need a second channel?
If a mailbox the agent uses is compromised, how fast can we shut it off, and what does the contract say you owe us when it's wrong?

Questions owners ask

how much does a fractional chief ai officer cost for a freight brokerage

The assessment is a fixed fee, agreed in writing before we start, and the monthly retainer begins after it if you want us to run the plan. We don't post a number because the scope depends on how many people and how many systems we need to look at. You'll have the fee before any work starts, and the plan is yours either way.

will ai work with my tms

It depends on which TMS and what it exposes, and that question is usually the project. The first versions we'd propose live beside the TMS, in the inbox and the spreadsheets your reps already use, and nothing goes inside it until the data is clean enough to trust. We check the integration options during the assessment and put the answer in the plan.

can an ai agent do my check calls

It can read the tracking feeds you already pay for and tell a rep which loads have no fresh update, which is where we'd start. We would keep a person on the line for carrier verification, because the public record now includes AI voices on the carrier side of those calls. We'd measure stale statuses at the end of the day, and the rep makes the calls that matter.

how long does an ai assessment take for a logistics company

Two to three weeks. Most of it is sitting with your reps and your billing people while they work, and reading what the TMS and the inbox hold. You get the ranked list and the 90-day plan at the end, in writing.

do i need to hire a developer to use ai in my 3pl

Not for the assessment, and not always for the first versions. When a build needs more hands than one, we bring in outside builders on a written scope and check what they deliver against it before you sign off. Your own people get trained on what's built, and the scorecard shows whether they're using it.

is it safe to let ai read our carrier and customer emails

Only with rules written down first. The AI-use policy sets what the agent can see and what it may do on its own, a named person can pull the agent's mailbox access, and we test that before anything goes live. We'd also read the vendor's contract for what they retain and what they owe you when the agent gets it wrong.

Start with twenty minutes.

If you run a brokerage or a 3PL and the inbox or the check calls are eating the day, book twenty minutes with Erick. He'll ask where the time goes and what you've already tried, and you'll leave with the one thing he'd look at first.

Book 20 minutes