Company Name: Armstrong Transport Group

Location: Charlotte, North Carolina

Size: Estimated $1.4 Billion in Top-Line Revenue for 2025

Services: Full Truckload (FTL), Less-Than-Truckload (LTL), Intermodal, Temperature-Controlled, Flatbed & Heavy Haul, Expedited Freight, Cross-Border Shipping

Problem: Operators overwhelmed by 400+ emails a day and juggling 20+ portals to manage 50–70 loads—making it harder to scale, protect margins, and retain top talent.

Results: With Augie, operators cut touches per load nearly in half, sped up billing by 8 days, and doubled the loads reps could manage—all while improving morale.

Scaling Without Burning Out Your People

Margins in freight brokerages are razor thin—often just 2–3%. Growth usually means adding more people, but hiring and retaining skilled operators is increasingly difficult. For leadership, this creates a dilemma: push for growth and risk burnout, or cap growth to preserve service.

Armstrong Transport Group, a Charlotte-based brokerage, faced that exact challenge. Known for its “say yes” culture and customer-first approach, Armstrong needed a way to keep scaling without sacrificing the people who made that growth possible.

What 400 Emails a Day Really Looks Like

For William McManus, an operations specialist at Armstrong, the workday often meant managing 50–70 loads while juggling hundreds of emails and more than 20 different browser tabs. He described it as feeling like the job had “no off switch.” The pressure left him working long hours, constantly multitasking, and with little room to step away at the end of the day.

One Teammate Across Every System

That’s where Augie came in— embedding directly into Slack, email and their TMS, and working like a teammate across channels.

For William, the difference was immediate. Instead of bouncing between systems, Augie surfaced updates and exceptions in Slack, read his emails, and worked inside the TMS to build and track loads, vet carriers, and manage POD collection and billing prep. “It’s night and day,” William says. “Augie checks my emails, tracks the load, and gives me the full breakdown—so I don’t have to go to seven different places.”

When Operators Get Their Time Back

With Augie running in the background, William’s days changed. He saved more than an hour each day on track and trace, reduced touches per load by nearly half, and saw billing cycles accelerate. Most importantly, he got his time back: “I get my full lunch again, and I’m not staying late to double-check things I forgot about until 4:45 pm.”

But Augie didn’t just make William’s life better. It made Armstrong’s business better: faster service for customers, happier employees, and the ability to handle more volume without scaling headcount 1:1.

What Augie Does for a Brokerage

For Armstrong, Augie isn’t just another tool—it’s a teammate that handles the busywork across chat, email, and their TMS. That means operators like William can focus on building stronger carrier relationships, anticipating customer needs, and solving high-impact logistics challenges—while Augie quietly keeps the freight moving.

Here’s what that looks like in practice with Augie on the team:

• Questions answered instantly in Slack/Teams/chat—no tab-hopping required

• Loads built automatically in your TMS—no more manual entry

• Carriers vetted, negotiated with, and selected for every load

• Pickup, transit, and delivery monitored—issues flagged before they escalate

• PODs and documents collected and validated—no human handoffs needed

• QBR prep and insights generated in seconds

• A 24/7 “daily briefing” delivered every morning—so operators start with a clear view

Unlike voice bots, RPA tools, or one-trick point solutions, Augie sees the big picture. It understands the full context of a shipment—from order to delivery to cash—and works across teams, systems, and channels to get the job done. As William describes it: “Augie just tells me what I need to know. I don’t have to go digging.”

To Augie, every unnecessary email or call is a defect. Its real goal? Quietly making sure the work gets done—so operators don’t have to think about it at all.

Why the CEO Calls It a Once-in-a-Generation Shift

For the C-suite, Augie is about far more than convenience. Armstrong CEO Cameron Ramsdell described it as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to enhance productivity in a way we probably haven’t seen before.” He compared the shift to “a little bit of the PC, the internet, and the microprocessor all at once.”

The numbers tell the story. Armstrong carrier reps have more than doubled the loads per day with Augie. Ramsdell emphasized that this isn’t just about volume — it’s about morale. “When people can spend less time on the grunt work and more time on what actually matters, they’re more engaged, more fulfilled, and yes, they make more money too.”

He was also clear on Armstrong’s approach to AI adoption. “AI should show up on every line item in the P&L,” Ramsdell noted, pointing to metrics like loads per rep, cost-to-serve, and employee retention. Over time, he believes, these gains will flow through to margins as well.

Finally, he explained why Armstrong Transport Group chose to work with Augie instead of patching together multiple point tools. In his words, “AI is a horizontally enabling layer… everything is omnichannel. It made more sense to go with one shop I had high conviction in, rather than base hits with point solutions and one-off integrations.”

A Playbook Any Brokerage Can Follow

Armstrong’s leadership views Augie as a way to turn a structural challenge—thin margins and operator burnout—into a competitive advantage. For Armstrong CEO Cameron Ramsdell, the real challenge with AI isn’t whether the technology works — it’s whether organizations can adapt fast enough to capture the benefits. As he put it: “Success with AI is mostly determined by the speed at which your org chart can change workflows… the bottleneck is no longer the technology, it’s the org chart.”

And Armstrong is not alone. William’s story is becoming the norm across our customers. Whether running on McLeod, MercuryGate, Turvo, TAI or proprietary systems, brokerages are embedding Augie directly into their workflows and seeing measurable gains:

• 40–60% fewer touches per load as Augie handles quoting, tracking, and documentation

• 40% fewer invoice delays, preventing cash from getting stuck in billing cycles

• Billing accelerated by an average of 8 days, improving cash flow

• Escalations resolved faster, with Augie surfacing context in real time

• Operators focused on high-value tasks, while Augie runs track & trace, vets carriers, and manages PODs in the background

The result: less operator burnout, stronger retention, and margin improvement that scales across the business. Or, as William puts it: “Now, when I log off, I actually get to log off.”

If you’re leading a brokerage or 3PL and facing the same pressures—tight margins, talent retention, and the need to scale without bloating headcount—Augie can help. Connect with an Augment representative to discuss how an AI teammate can integrate into your workflows, reduce cost to serve, and create sustainable operating leverage for your business.