How Polaris Transportation Group Automated 85% of Customs Clearance with UiPath

Polaris Transportation Group runs cross-border freight operations between Canada and the United States in the less-than-truckload (LTL) market — one of the most time-sensitive and document-intensive segments in logistics. Every shipment generates customs paperwork, order data, and freight documentation that must be processed accurately and quickly to keep freight moving. In a market where digital-first competitors are raising the bar, manual document handling was a structural disadvantage.

Before automation, Polaris employees touched documents two, three, or four times per shipment and still produced errors that degraded the customer experience. Order creation from unstructured email took 15 to 20 minutes per order. Customs documentation was processed manually, adding delays to time-critical cross-border shipments. Bill of lading reconciliation at the trailer level required several people working five to six hours each night. The business ran on skilled people doing low-value administrative work.

Polaris partnered with qBotica, a managed services provider, to deploy automation built on the UiPath Platform across its core operational workflows. Customs documents are now classified, validated, and processed automatically using qBotica’s Document AI service powered by UiPath Document Understanding — with exceptions routed to staff only when required. Order creation automation reads incoming email, extracts relevant data, and creates orders end-to-end when the information is complete. Bill of lading documents arriving with freight are now automatically aligned to orders in the transportation management system, triggering customs clearance and invoicing while shipments are still in transit.

The results were significant across every automated workflow: 85% of customs documents now clear automatically, order creation time dropped from 15–20 minutes to under two minutes, 30% of orders require no employee intervention, and trailer-level bill of lading reconciliation that took a team several hours now completes in minutes. The accuracy improvement is equally notable — documents are processed exactly as received, eliminating disputes caused by manual transcription errors.

Polaris is now extending its automation foundation toward AI-driven orchestration for quoting workflows, using qBotica’s agent platform built on UiPath to assess incoming requests, apply dynamic pricing logic, and respond to customers more consistently. The five-year automation buildout positions Polaris to compete with digital-first freight platforms on operational capability rather than just asset scale.