River Logistics

River Logistics is a transportation management company handling freight coordination across the western United States. The team was spending significant operational hours on routine client email communication, and asked me to design AI-powered automation that could integrate with their existing TMS (Transportation Management System).

Client communication followed predictable patterns but required context that lived inside the TMS — shipment status, ETA changes, dispatch updates. Pure templated responses wouldn't work. We needed automation that pulled live operational data, generated context-aware messages, and routed exceptions back to humans without breaking the existing workflow the team relied on.

I worked directly with the CEO, COO, and a small team of interns to map the existing communication flow end to end. From there, I designed and prototyped automation that connected the TMS to AI-generated email drafts, with clear handoff points for human review. The goal was augmentation — making the team faster, not replacing their judgment.

The automation reduced time spent on routine client emails meaningfully and gave operators more space to focus on exceptions and relationship-building. I left the team with documentation and a working prototype that could continue to evolve.