Circle Logistics x HappyRobot: Case Study

‍The Challenge

Freight brokerage has always been a phone-heavy business. Carrier sales reps spend most of their day exchanging routine data — load details, rate negotiations, booking confirmations, compliance checks — leaving little time for the relationship-building that actually drives long-term growth. At scale, this creates real problems: peak volumes overwhelm teams, negotiation quality varies rep to rep, hold times frustrate carriers, and manual fraud screening can't keep pace with increasingly sophisticated threats. Circle Logistics recognized that the traditional playbook of "hit the phones harder" wasn't sustainable. Carriers don't want to use the phone the way they used to. The phone needed to become a relationship tool, not a data exchange mechanism.

The Solution & Impact

Circle partnered with HappyRobot to deploy AI agents that deeply integrated with their TMS (Transport Pro) and key industry platforms including DAT, Truckstop, and Highway. The AI handles the full carrier interaction flow — presenting load information, negotiating rates, confirming bookings, and running fraud checks — while feeding every data point directly into Circle's systems in real time.

The approach was deliberate: focus on the 99% of common interactions rather than chasing edge cases, make the experience fast and frictionless for carriers, and keep fraud vetting unobtrusive by pulling compliance data automatically in the background. 

The numbers tell the story:

• 21% of all freight booked with zero human touch — hundreds of loads every week
• 80–100% reduction in manual calls required across every deployed use case
• 10% higher margins from consistent negotiation patterns
• 100% of calls answered 24/7 with no hold time, even at peak volume
• 5x+ ROI with unit economics at an all-time high

Critically, this hasn't eliminated jobs — it's created them. Employees are freed to focus on strategic, high-value work while AI handles the transactional volume.

How the Partnership Has Grown

What started two years ago as an inbound carrier sales pilot has expanded into a full quote-to-cash automation strategy spanning multiple departments. Circle's dedicated AI team has driven that expansion by mastering the integrations that make AI effective — building deep API connections across their entire tech stack.

The partnership between Circle and HappyRobot continues to compound. New revenue sources have been unlocked, carrier profiles improve with every interaction through unique data capture, and the automation rate keeps climbing. Circle's leadership views AI investment not as optional but as a competitive requirement — and with the results to prove it, they've established themselves as the clear frontrunner in applied AI for freight brokerage.

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