How a Logistics Firm Saved 15 Hours a Week With AI Agents

Meridian Logistics is a 45-person transport and logistics company based in the Midlands. They handle regional deliveries for manufacturing and retail clients across central England.

Before automation, their dispatch process was entirely manual. After deploying AI agents, they saved 15 hours per week and reduced customer service calls by 60%.

Here's how it happened.

The problem

Meridian's dispatch coordinator, James, started every morning the same way: reviewing incoming orders, matching them to available drivers, planning routes, and communicating the day's schedule to the team.

This took roughly 3 hours every morning. And that was just the start.

Throughout the day:

Clients called for delivery updates (20–30 calls per day)
Route changes required phone calls to drivers and clients
Delays cascaded through the schedule, requiring manual re-coordination
End-of-day reporting took another hour of data compilation

James was working 10-hour days and still falling behind. The company was growing, and the manual process simply couldn't keep up.

What they automated

Meridian deployed AI agents on three interconnected workflows:

1. Dispatch coordination

The agent now handles initial dispatch planning:

Reads incoming orders from their system overnight
Matches orders to drivers based on location, vehicle type, and capacity
Generates optimised route plans considering traffic patterns and delivery windows
Sends the daily schedule to each driver's mobile device by 6 AM

James reviews the plan each morning and makes adjustments for special circumstances. What used to take 3 hours now takes 30 minutes.

2. Customer status notifications

Instead of waiting for clients to call, the agent sends proactive updates:

Order confirmed: "Your delivery is scheduled for [date] between [window]."
Out for delivery: "Your driver is en route. Estimated arrival: [time]."
Delivered: "Your delivery has been completed. Signed by [name]."
Delay alert: "We're experiencing a delay on your delivery. New estimated time: [time]. Apologies for the inconvenience."

Clients get the information they need before they think to ask.

3. Exception handling

When something goes wrong — a vehicle breakdown, a road closure, a client not available for delivery — the agent:

Assesses the impact on the remaining schedule
Identifies which deliveries need rerouting
Proposes alternatives (different driver, different time, next-day delivery)
Notifies affected clients proactively
Alerts James only when the situation requires human judgement

The results

After 8 weeks of running the automation:

Time saved: 15 hours per week

Morning dispatch planning: 2.5 hours saved per day
Customer status calls: reduced from 25/day to 10/day (the remaining calls are for genuine issues)
End-of-day reporting: automated entirely

Customer service calls reduced by 60%

Proactive notifications eliminated the majority of "where's my delivery?" calls
Remaining calls are about genuine issues, not status checks

On-time delivery rate improved from 84% to 93%

Better route optimisation
Proactive delay management
Earlier detection of scheduling conflicts

Driver satisfaction improved

Clear daily schedules available before the day starts
Fewer mid-day phone calls disrupting their work
Better route planning means less time stuck in traffic

What James does now

James didn't lose his job. His role evolved:

Morning: 30-minute review of the agent's dispatch plan, adjusting for special circumstances
During the day: Handling genuine exceptions that require human judgement (difficult clients, major disruptions, new route negotiations)
Afternoon: Working on process improvements and client relationship management
End of day: Reviewing automated reports and planning for the next day

He went from being buried in coordination tasks to being the strategic operations lead. "I actually have time to think about how to make things better, instead of just keeping plates spinning," he says.

The deployment timeline

Week 1: Process mapping and rule definition with James and the team
Week 2: Agent deployment and parallel running (manual + automated)
Week 3: Gradual handover, with James monitoring results
Week 4: Full automation with James handling exceptions only
Week 6: Status notification system deployed to clients
Week 8: Full measurement and optimisation review

Total investment to payback: 6 weeks.

Lessons learned

Meridian's experience highlights several patterns that apply to any business:

Start with the biggest bottleneck. Dispatch coordination was clearly the constraint. Fixing that one process unlocked time for everything else.
The person doing the work must be involved. James's knowledge of edge cases and client preferences was essential to configuring the automation correctly.
Proactive communication has outsized impact. The customer notification system was almost an afterthought, but it delivered the most visible improvement — and the most positive client feedback.
Automation evolves. The initial deployment handled 80% of scenarios. Over the following weeks, the team refined rules and added edge case handling until coverage reached 95%+.
People find better uses for their time. James's role became more valuable, not less. The company gets more from their best operations person, not less.

Relevance to your business

You don't need to be a logistics company to benefit from these patterns. Every business has:

A coordination task that takes too long
Customers who call for updates they should receive automatically
Exceptions that could be handled more systematically

The specific tools differ. The principles are the same.