STG Logistics automated manual tender processing with Pallet
With Pallet automating order processing, our team gets 60% of their time back.
95% touchless resolution rate for orders
80% cost savings in order entry
45 data fields required per order
- CustomerSTG Logistics
- HeadquartersChicago Metro, IL
- Operation TypePort-to-Door Logistics Provider
- ServicesIntermodal, Drayage, Deferred LTL, LCL Services, Transloading, Warehousing, Final Mile
Summary
STG Logistics deployed Pallet to automate tender processing across its intermodal and drayage operations. Orders that once required manual TMS entry are now processed touchlessly, with 95% requiring no human intervention and the remainder handled by a human operator. The result: lower cost to serve, faster order execution, and operators freed to focus on customer service.
About the company
STG Logistics is the largest fully integrated port-to-door service provider in the United States, with more than 100 locations across North America, including all major port markets. The company owns 15,000 53-foot intermodal containers and operates across intermodal, drayage, container deconsolidation, reconsolidation, transloading, warehousing, over the road, and final mile.
Salvatore DiDonato is EVP and Chief Information Officer at STG Logistics, where he leads technology strategy and AI-enabled transformation across the company's logistics network. Salvatore is also a board advisor to TMS provider Revenova and WMS provider Made4net. Prior to STG, he was a technology and operations leader at Cigna and Lineage Logistics.
Challenges
STG needed to grow without expanding its labor footprint, and tender processing was one of the clearest bottlenecks.
Before Pallet, when a shipper tendered an order, a customer service agent had to open the email, extract the order details, and manually enter them into STG's TMS. That process took 5 minutes per order, and 15 team members were spending 60% of their day on manual order entry.
The work was highly variable. Tenders arrived as PDFs, Excel files, plain-text emails, and attachments buried several levels deep. Operators needed to fill out at least 45 fields inside the TMS. Customers had different business rules and default specifications, based on customer and facility. Requirements also changed by move type and railroad, with additional complexity from rail billing systems, customs compliance, hazmat data, and shipment-specific regulatory fields.
- Intermodal and drayage orders required additional fields like rail bills, chassis numbers, and cargo itemization
- Hazmat orders required attaching safety sheets and followed a different routing process
- Cross-border orders with Mexico required line-by-line cargo details
Even the same customer might send us multiple orders with different requirements and formats.
Traditional OCR-based approaches could not keep up. Every new customer meant new data, new configuration work, and new failure points. STG needed a system that could handle format variability without constant rework and integrate directly into its proprietary environment without disrupting the customer service workflow.
Solution
STG’s requirements were twofold: The system had to be accurate, and it had to fit into the way the team already worked. Pallet met both.
Pallet used LLM-powered AI agents to read and interpret tenders across formats without the repeated reconfiguration required by traditional OCR systems. Pallet also integrated directly into STG’s workflow, reading orders inside their inbox and sending the orders to their custom TMS via EDI, so no system or process changes were required.
Along the way, Pallet handled various technical complexities in processing orders including:
- Chain of documents stored in web portals, not attached to the email
- Building a decryption tool to handle encrypted PDFs
- Supporting .eml file formats
- Parallel agents for processing for 50+ orders in bulk
We started by giving you our most complex orders. Once we knew you could process those, we were confident you could handle everything else.
Impact
Touchless order processing gave the team capacity back where it matters. The 15 people who had spent most of their day on tender entry now focus on higher-value work, and the downstream errors that manual order creation introduces, including billing issues, incorrect legs, chassis charges, and compliance failures, have been substantially reduced.
95% of the orders that Pallet processed required no intervention. We were able to deliver better, more timely service.
The result: a 5x return on investment.
STG is now expanding its Pallet deployment, adding agents across order execution and customer service.
