Building tools for the next era of global trade

Freight software was built to keep records.

The systems most forwarders run on were built for a different job. They file the shipment, raise the invoice and keep the audit trail. They were never meant to do the work.

The work happens somewhere else. A customer emails for 2×40HC Ningbo to Felixstowe. Someone opens three carrier sheets, checks this month’s GRI, adds BAF and THC, applies a margin and types a reply. If the customer accepts, the same shipment is keyed into a carrier portal, then into the TMS, then checked again when the invoice lands.

And freight rarely goes to plan. A sailing is blanked, a booking is rolled, a surcharge lands mid-month. The software expects the plan. Every exception goes back to a person, an inbox and a spreadsheet.

The software records what happened. People still do the work.

Software can finally read freight.

Most of a forwarder’s business arrives as language: an enquiry in an email, a rate sheet as a PDF, a booking confirmation, a carrier invoice. Old software could store these. It could not read them.

AI changes that. It can read an enquiry the way your pricing team does, find the right rate, check it against the contract and write the reply. It can read a carrier invoice line by line against what was agreed.

Adding a chatbot to a system built for records doesn’t change much. The software has to be built around the work. That turns the back office from a place where work is recorded into a place where work gets done.

Four things an AI back office has to get right.

1. [1]

   Live on your inbox, not after a year.

   Connect Gmail or Outlook. Modem builds your accounts, lanes and rates from your mail history, so your team is quoting the same day.

2. [2]

   Built for freight, not adapted to it.

   Lanes, surcharges, GRIs, free time and booking confirmations are part of the data model, not custom fields on a generic CRM.

3. [3]

   Agents do the work. Your team signs off.

   Enquiries priced, quotes drafted, carriers booked and invoices checked, inside the margin rules and approval steps you set.

4. [4]

   Your way of working, kept.

   Your SOPs are written from how your team already works, and every agent follows them on every job.

Freight is a relationship business. Keep it that way.

Forwarding has always run on people: the customer who calls you first, the carrier rep who finds space in a tight week, the ops lead who knows which consignee needs the paperwork early.

There’s a real worry in the trade that AI is coming for those people. We see it the other way round. Trade isn’t getting simpler. Tariffs change overnight, customs filings multiply, and one blocked strait reroutes a season’s sailings. The world won’t need fewer forwarders. It will need forwarders who can handle more.

That’s the work AI should take: the keying, chasing and checking that grows with every new customer. We’re building Modem so your team can take on more business without hiring for every new account. The judgement, the relationships and the phone call that saves a shipment stay with your people.

One back office, from enquiry to invoice.

Modem reads every email and document as it lands and files it against the right customer, lane and shipment. It keeps one record of your rates and accounts. Its agents price enquiries, draft quotes, book carriers and check invoices, inside the margin rules and SOPs your team sets.

We are building it in London, for the forwarders who move the world’s freight.