How NTG and Augment Built a Smarter, Faster Freight Operation with AI

Results at a Glance

Background

Nolan Transportation Group (NTG) is a top-25 U.S. freight broker, operating as the brokerage division of TI Holdco. With its nationwide coverage, extensive carrier network, and customer base spanning multiple industry verticals, NTG handles enormous freight complexity every day. Its proprietary TMS (BOS), built in-house, reflects the operational sophistication the team has developed through years of deliberate technology investment.

NTG has built its brand on deep customer relationships and exceptional service. As the company looked toward continued growth, leadership identified a strategic opportunity: deploy AI to extend the team’s capacity, sharpen their competitive edge, and ensure that the people-first culture NTG is known for could scale alongside the business.

The Strategic Case for AI

NTG’s leadership entered 2025 with a clear view of where AI could create the most value. The opportunity wasn’t to replace their team’s expertise — it was to amplify it. Repetitive, transactional tasks like check calls, document collection, and carrier screening are necessary to keep freight moving, but they don’t require the relationship skills and market judgment that NTG’s people excel at.

By applying AI to high-volume, process-driven work, NTG’s leadership saw a path to giving their team more time for the strategic, relationship-driven work that differentiates NTG in the market. The goal was simple: move faster, serve customers better, and grow without adding cost at the same pace.

“AI was moving fast enough that we could either move with it or fall behind our competitors, who weren’t waiting around. We were determined to be on the right side of that — for our business, our team, and our customers.”

— Jeff Kim, NTG

Why Augment

NTG conducted a competitive evaluation before selecting Augment. 

Augment’s flagship product is an AI teammate called Augie — purpose-built for freight operations and designed to work across the full load lifecycle. Like many Augment customers, NTG customized their AI teammate with their own name. They call it Buzz.

Buzz handles carrier communication, load tracking, document collection, and more — working alongside NTG’s team to take on high-volume process work while reps focus on negotiations, exceptions, and customer relationships.

What separated Augment was a combination of product and industry depth, implementation speed, and demonstrated adoption by carrier floor operators.

Industry fluency from day one

NTG’s workflows aren’t generic. Only about 60% of loads move through a clean “happy path.” The other 40% involve edge cases and operational nuance that take years to understand. Augment’s team arrived already fluent in freight. Former colleagues were part of the Augment team, and NTG’s leadership had existing relationships with Augment’s leadership. When Jeff Kim raised a challenge, Augment didn’t need context — they understood immediately, and they moved.

Responsiveness that builds trust

During the POC period, a clear differentiator emerged: Augment’s combination of engineering resources and domain expertise translated into speed. Issues were resolved in a day or two. In a live freight operation, that matters enormously — fast iteration means operators stay confident, adoption holds, and the value compounds.

“Augment gets it — they know the industry and they know the tech. When the people building the AI actually understand what operators need, getting buy-in on the floor isn’t a battle. That makes all the difference.”

— Jeff Kim, NTG

Build vs. buy: a clear decision

NTG had built its own TMS, so the instinct to build AI in-house was real. But the calculus quickly became clear. Kim framed it this way: “If we were starting a new brokerage from scratch, would we try to build both a brokerage and an AI platform at once?” NTG’s competitive edge lives in its pricing models, capacity matching, and carrier relationships — the proprietary advantages that took years to build. Partnering with Augment’s 110+ engineers to build AI infrastructure wasn’t a shortcut. It was smart strategy.

“Do we want to be an AI shop, or are we a transportation logistics brokerage? If somebody can get us to AI sophistication faster and at lower cost, why wouldn’t we do that?”

— Jeff Kim, NTG

Building Buy-In on the Floor

Technology rollouts at freight brokerages follow a familiar pattern: leadership gets excited, the floor gets skeptical, and adoption either takes hold or the tools gather dust. The key to Buzz’s success was a combination of deep pre-launch testing, fast post-launch iteration, and a transparency that proved to be Buzz’s most effective adoption tool: showing operators exactly what the AI was doing, why, and where the information came from.

NTG held weekly feedback sessions on the floor. When reps flagged issues, Augment fixed them within a day or two. As operators saw Buzz working reliably and visibly alongside them — not around them — skepticism gave way to confidence. The carrier floor, led by 13-year NTG veteran Dwayne Williams, became advocates for the technology.

“Nobody got into freight brokerage to spend half their day on check calls and tracking. When Buzz took that off the plate, reps didn’t just get time back — they got their jobs back.”

— Dwayne Williams, SVP Carrier Sales, NTG

Results: Three Workflows, Measurable Impact

NTG and Augment assess success the way NTG runs its business: workflow by workflow, against actual operations. Buzz is already delivering meaningful time savings by supporting tens of thousands of loads each week — time that reps redirect toward higher-value carrier and customer relationships.

“Before, growth was one-to-one — more volume meant more people, almost dollar for dollar. With Augment, we’ve improved how we work, not just how much we can handle. We can grow at a significantly faster rate without adding cost at the same pace. That’s what AI unlocked for us.”

— Jeff Kim, NTG

POD Collection

NTG started with document collection for a deliberate reason: the downside risk was low and the upside was real. Before Buzz, POD collection was a multi-department effort. After a load delivered, carrier reps, customer reps, AR, and factoring companies each independently pursued the same document — sometimes contacting the same carrier multiple times.

Buzz changed the model. The moment a load delivers, Buzz checks whether NTG already has the document before reaching out. Only when a document is genuinely missing does Buzz contact the driver and dispatcher. The result: immediate, consistent outreach every time, with a full audit trail operators can inspect.

An unexpected benefit emerged: carriers began sending documents proactively. After months of receiving prompt, automated requests at delivery, many carriers built it into their routine. POD collection cycles compressed, accelerating cash collection across NTG’s entire invoice volume. The accounting team’s feedback was direct: “don’t you dare turn it off.”

Inbound Carrier Sourcing (Voice + Email)

Carrier sourcing was where the operational impact became most tangible. NTG handles a high volume of inbound carrier contacts daily. Carrier sales reps previously spent significant time on intake work — collecting MC numbers, verifying compliance, confirming load availability — before getting to actual negotiations.

Buzz took over the first layer of that workflow. It screens inbound calls and emails, verifies carrier eligibility against NTG’s compliance standards, and routes non-qualifying carriers to the right teams. For carriers that pass, Buzz handles initial outreach and load matching, with reps stepping in when their expertise adds the most value. Reps who previously spent a significant portion of their day on intake now spend it almost entirely on closing.

The email channel proved to be an additional win. Buzz handles inbound carrier emails end-to-end — reading incomplete requests, surfacing missing details, validating carriers, and moving qualified ones into negotiation. Carrier sales reps now use Buzz as an extension of themselves, pulling answers from the AI and looping it into email chains to focus their attention where it counts.

Track & Trace

Track and trace is the highest-volume repetitive work at any brokerage. Every load in motion needs to be confirmed at key milestones, and when automated systems fall short, someone has to make direct contact. Buzz handles the full tracking lifecycle: dispatching, driver information collection, check-in and check-out confirmation, and escalation of exceptions to the appropriate rep. 

Buzz now handles 87% of NTG’s daily track-and-trace load volume. Time spent capturing manual load notes is down by 55%, and reps are spending a third less time on status updates. As a result, NTG’s reps are freed to focus on exceptions and complex situations that require human judgment. 

What’s Next

For NTG’s leadership, the real measure is strategic: how much volume can NTG move without adding cost in a linear way? And how much more time can the team spend on the work that actually differentiates NTG? These results reflect only three workflows. The infrastructure is built. The scale is next.

Planned expansions include end-to-end booking automation, AP inbox automation, load protection, and a potential expansion across Transportation Insight’s broader shipper base. Carrier sourcing — currently handling a significant portion of NTG’s total load volume — will scale further this year.

The infrastructure is built. The trust is established. The floor has bought in. What comes next isn’t another new technology deployment — it’s scale.