Time Machine

Cargo and freight agents

Name: Cargo and Freight Agents: employment and wages since 1942
Creator: Future History
License: https://futurehistory.earth/terms

Also called Freight agent, Cargo agent, Freight forwarder, Shipping agent, Air cargo agent

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 97,670 US cargo and freight agents, with median pay of $52,260 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the highest was 105,220, in May 2023. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 12,000 from 1942, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for cargo and freight agents: Cloud TMS, CargoWise, and real-time shipment visibility, 2000 to 2020.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 6.2% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

27.3% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated 11 October 2026.

Cite this page

APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Cargo and freight agents: jobs and pay since 1942 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-5011

Chicago

Future History. "Cargo and freight agents: jobs and pay since 1942." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-5011.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_43_5011, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Cargo and freight agents: jobs and pay since 1942}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-5011}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time

1850187519001925195019752000now

2026

Known then as Forwarding Agent / Shipping Agent (pre-regulatory era)

Known then as Customhouse Broker / Freight Forwarder (ICC era begins)

Known then as Customhouse Broker / Licensed Freight Forwarder (Tariff Act licensing era)

Known then as Freight Agent / Air Cargo Agent / Ocean Freight Agent (deregulation era)

Known then as Cargo and Freight Agents (BLS SOC 43-5011)

Known today as Cargo and Freight Agents (BLS SOC 43-5011)

Projected to still be called Cargo and Freight Agents (BLS SOC 43-5011)

Data from the May 2025 survey

US Employment

98K

Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic

Report an error

Median Annual Wage

$52,260

Est.

≈ $50,920 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic

Report an error

Beat · 1836

Thomas Meadows and Co. Ltd. is established in London as one of the earliest organised freight forwarding firms, arranging trade between European manufacturers and US customers via rail and steamship while managing customs requirements on both ends of the journey. The firm's model, acting as an intermediary who takes responsibility for documentation and coordination that neither shipper nor carrier wants to manage, defines what cargo and freight agents still do nearly two centuries later.

Beat · 1839

William Harnden begins making regular courier trips between New York City and Boston, Massachusetts, transporting small parcels, currency, and documents for merchants. This is widely regarded as the founding act of the American express industry. Within a decade, Adams Express, American Express, and Wells Fargo have each built networks of agents at railroad depots and steamship wharves across the country, creating a substantial new workforce of cargo-coordination specialists.

Beat · 1930

Congress passes the Tariff Act of 1930, which establishes a formal licensing system for customhouse brokers under the authority of the Secretary of the Treasury. A person must hold a valid customs broker's licence to transact customs business on behalf of others. This is the first federal licensing regime for any freight-agent function and establishes the principle of licensed intermediary that now underpins much of the cargo agent profession.

Beat · 1942

Congress enacts the Freight Forwarder Act (Part IV of the Interstate Commerce Act), bringing surface freight forwarders under Interstate Commerce Commission regulation. Freight forwarders must now obtain ICC licences, file rates, and observe common-carrier obligations. The regulatory framework remains largely intact until the Surface Freight Forwarder Deregulation Act of 1986 begins unwinding it. The 1942 Act is the legislative moment that formally distinguishes the cargo-forwarding function from general freight brokerage.

Beat · 1977

President Carter signs the Air Cargo Deregulation Act on November 9, 1977, removing Civil Aeronautics Board route and rate restrictions from domestic air freight, one year before passenger airline deregulation. FedEx and UPS rapidly expand their all-cargo networks; overnight delivery becomes commercially viable nationwide. Air cargo agents at major airport hubs see shipment volumes surge almost immediately. The Mercatus Center later characterises the outcome as "expanded service, generally reduced cargo rates, and substantial innovation" that air freight forwarders were integral to executing.

Beat · 2001

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, US Customs and the newly created Transportation Security Administration impose sweeping new cargo security requirements: the 24-hour advance manifest rule (2002), C-TPAT (Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism) participation, and enhanced air cargo screening. These requirements add substantial compliance work to every international shipment. Cargo agents, who sit between shippers and carriers, absorb much of this compliance burden, adding security documentation and screening coordination to an already document-intensive job.

Beat · 2015

CBP mandates the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) as the sole authorised EDI system for electronic entry and entry summary filings, retiring the 1984-era Automated Commercial System. ACE had been in development since 1994; its full rollout took over two decades. For cargo agents and customs brokers, ACE enables national licence portability (a broker licenced in one port can file for any port) and consolidates dozens of partner government agency declarations into one filing. The ACE transition is the largest technology-driven administrative restructuring of cargo agent work in a generation.

Beat · 2025

Flexport launches its Customs Technology Suite in October 2025, featuring an AI auditor that reviews 100% of customs entries before CBP submission and reduces error rates to 0.2%. The launch is emblematic of a broader wave: Raft AI (document automation), Wisor (AI rate quoting), and Nuvo AI (March 2026, 12+ AI agents handling 70% of load touchpoints) collectively represent the most significant technology shift in cargo agent work since EDI in the mid-1980s. The difference from prior automation waves is that these tools operate on unstructured documents and conversational workflows, not just structured data fields.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

How it began · 1836

The modern cargo and freight agent traces a direct lineage to a firm called Thomas Meadows and Co. Ltd., established in London in 1836, which arranged the movement of goods between European manufacturers and American customers via rail and steamship while handling the paperwork and customs formalities neither shipper nor carrier wished to manage themselves. That same decade, the express agent was emerging in the United States through a parallel path: William Harnden began making regular courier trips between New York City and Boston in 1839, carrying small parcels, currency, and documents for merchants who could not supervise the journey themselves. By the 1850s, the great express companies, Adams Express, American Express, and Wells Fargo, had hundreds of agents stationed at railroad depots, steamship wharves, and express offices across the country, receiving freight, issuing receipts, coordinating transfers, and ensuring that consignments moved from shipper to consignee without loss or misdirection. At the major seaports, a related but distinct figure had already been operating for decades: the customhouse broker, who knew the tariff schedules, the port officers, and the bond requirements well enough to clear imported goods through customs on behalf of importers who did not. Congress formalised the profession when it passed the Tariff Act of 1930, establishing a formal licensing system for customhouse brokers under Secretary of the Treasury authority. Twelve years later, in 1942, Congress brought surface freight forwarders under Interstate Commerce Commission regulation via the Freight Forwarder Act, completing the regulatory framing of what is now a single broadly defined occupation. These three historical strands, the express agent, the customs broker, and the licensed surface forwarder, converged through the twentieth century into the cargo and freight agent who coordinates multimodal shipments, prepares trade documents, and serves as the human link between shippers and the increasingly complex global logistics network.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace cargo and freight agents? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say

Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

→ 2035

+6.2%

BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 43-5011 (Cargo and freight agents): 100.3 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 106.4 thousand in 2035, a change of +6.2 thousand (+6.2%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (0.8% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.

Official statisticReport an error

How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)

Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.

Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"

2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)

27.3%

of tasks

What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 43-5011.00 Cargo and Freight Agents. Shown: human-rated β = 0.273, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.091 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.455; GPT-4-rated β 0.47. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error

Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for cargo and freight agents

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereGenerate instant freight quotes across ocean, air, and trucking modes using AI-powered rate platforms that pull live contract and spot rates from multiple carriers simultaneously, replacing a process that previously took hours of manual rate-checking.

Generate instant freight quotes across ocean, air, and trucking modes using AI-powered rate platforms that pull live contract and spot rates from multiple carriers simultaneously, replacing a process that previously took hours of manual rate-checking.^[9],[10]

Tools picking this up

Wisor ↗Freightos WebCargo ↗Cargorates.ai ↗

Where your edge is

Focus on rate negotiation strategy and carrier relationship management that AI platforms cannot replicate; use the time saved on quoting to develop preferred-carrier terms.

AI is sitting alongside you herePrepare and validate bills of lading, commercial invoices, packing lists, and customs entry documents, with AI document-processing tools extracting data automatically from unstructured source files and flagging missing or inconsistent fields before submission.

Prepare and validate bills of lading, commercial invoices, packing lists, and customs entry documents, with AI document-processing tools extracting data automatically from unstructured source files and flagging missing or inconsistent fields before submission.^[11],[7]

Tools picking this up

Raft ↗CargoWise ↗Flexport Customs Technology Suite ↗

Where your edge is

Build expertise in reviewing AI-extracted entries for regulatory accuracy, particularly for HS code classification and Incoterms, where errors carry financial liability.

AI is sitting alongside you hereCoordinate carrier bookings and appointment scheduling across trucking, ocean, and air carriers by reviewing AI-generated load plans and confirming or adjusting them based on customer priority, capacity constraints, and contracted lane obligations.

Coordinate carrier bookings and appointment scheduling across trucking, ocean, and air carriers by reviewing AI-generated load plans and confirming or adjusting them based on customer priority, capacity constraints, and contracted lane obligations.^[5],[11]

Tools picking this up

Nuvo AI ↗Raft ↗

Where your edge is

Maintain strong direct relationships with key carrier reps; when AI-negotiated rates fail or capacity disappears during peak seasons, personal contacts unlock alternatives that algorithms cannot surface.

Where cargo and freight agents go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers
US median pay
$107,230 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+6.1%
Logisticians
US median pay
$82,320 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+17.6%
Production, Planning, and Expediting Clerks
US median pay
$59,650 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
-1.3%

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers

Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers lead the teams and vendor networks that cargo agents work within. The role requires proven leadership, P&L accountability, and multi-site operational scope beyond day-to-day shipment handling. Senior cargo agents with strong carrier relationship portfolios and a track record managing exceptions under pressure are natural candidates for this path.

What you'd add

· People management and team leadership
· Operations budgeting and financial reporting
· Carrier contract negotiation at the master agreement level
· Safety and compliance program management (DOT, OSHA)
· Strategic vendor selection and performance management

What it takesA real upskill, but a natural one

Tools of the era

How has the work of cargo and freight agents changed since 1836?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

Ledger, bill of lading, telegraph (pre-electronic coordination era)
The first freight agents worked with pen, ledger, and printed tariff schedules. The bill of lading, whose roots stretch to medieval maritime trade, served as the central document: a receipt, a contract of carriage, and a title document in one page. The electric telegraph, commercially widespread in the US from the 1850s onward, was the first tool to change the job materially: an agent in New York could now confirm a consignment's arrival in Chicago the same day rather than waiting for the mail packet. The telephone, widespread in commercial offices by the 1890s, further accelerated coordination with carriers and consignees. These tools did not reduce headcount; they expanded the radius of trade that a given agent could manage, and the volume of international commerce grew faster than productivity gains could absorb.
Telex, airway bill, and ICC rate tariff manuals (interwar and postwar regulated era)
Telex machines, commercially widespread from the 1930s onward, replaced most telegraph use for international cargo communications and became the dominant tool for booking cargo space with ocean steamship lines and, from the 1940s, with air carriers. The airway bill emerged as the standard air transport document after IATA standardised it in the late 1940s: a non-negotiable consignment receipt that moved with the cargo rather than being transmitted separately, as the ocean bill of lading was. For agents handling surface freight under ICC regulation (from 1942), the job centered on mastering multi-volume tariff manuals, filing rates with the ICC, and coordinating LTL consolidation, a skill set that was entirely manual and paper-based. The regulated environment kept margins thin but employment steady; there was no competitive pressure to automate.
Air cargo deregulation + container standardisation (rapid volume growth era)
The Air Cargo Deregulation Act of November 9, 1977 removed Civil Aeronautics Board route and rate controls from domestic air freight. Within two years, all-cargo carriers like FedEx and UPS had expanded their networks dramatically, nationwide overnight shipping became affordable, and the volume of air freight shipments handled by agents surged. Simultaneously, ocean container standardisation, driven by Malcom McLean's intermodal revolution from the late 1950s but reaching critical mass in the 1970s, restructured ocean cargo agent work from break-bulk piece-handling documentation to container load planning and NVOCC (non-vessel-operating common carrier) consolidation. Deregulation did not displace agents; it multiplied the transactions each agent had to process. Employment grew substantially through the 1980s.
Effect on the work
The Mercatus Center analysis of air cargo deregulation found that cargo rates fell substantially and service expanded rapidly in the two years after 1977. For agents, this meant more shipments per year, not fewer jobs: the volume expansion outpaced any productivity gain from the existing paper-and-telex workflow.
EDI and automated customs entry (ACS, 1984; ACE development, 1994)
The US Customs Service launched the Automated Commercial System (ACS) in the mid-1980s, one of the first large-scale EDI systems for trade processing in the world. For cargo agents and customs brokers, ACS meant that customs entries could be filed electronically rather than by paper submission at the customs house: a transformation that compacted entry processing from days to hours and enabled pre-arrival clearance for air freight. The UN/EDIFACT protocol, established in 1986, gave a common message structure (IFTMIN for shipment instruction, IFTSTA for status updates) that carriers, agents, and customs authorities could exchange automatically. By 1990, the largest freight forwarders were investing in proprietary systems; by the mid-1990s, first-generation TMS software from companies like Descartes (founded 1981) gave mid-sized forwarders similar capability.
Effect on the work
Electronic filing reduced the labour content of a routine customs entry substantially: work that required a clerk at a customs house counter was replaced by a few keystrokes. The net employment effect was partially offsetting: each agent could handle more entries, but growing trade volumes kept aggregate employment rising. The transformation was a productivity gain, not a displacement event.
Cloud TMS, CargoWise, and real-time shipment visibility (integrated platform era)
CargoWise, founded in 1994 by Richard White and Maree Isaacs in Australia, launched its third-generation CargoWise One platform in 2014: a single unified system covering forwarding operations, customs lodgement, warehouse management, and carrier EDI messaging. It became the de facto operating platform for mid-to-large freight forwarders globally. Cloud migration through the 2000s democratised TMS access for smaller brokers. Real-time visibility platforms, project44 (founded 2014) and FourKites (founded 2014), gave agents live GPS and port-status feeds for the first time, shifting exception management from reactive phone calls to proactive dashboard alerts.
Agentic AI platforms (Raft, Wisor, Nuvo AI, Flexport Customs Suite)
From 2022 onward, a new generation of AI-native freight platforms began handling tasks that the first wave of TMS software had digitised but not automated: parsing unstructured shipping documents with high accuracy (Raft AI); generating freight quotes in seconds by matching live carrier rates across modes (Wisor); deploying AI agents that manage 70% of load touchpoints autonomously (Nuvo AI, launched March 2026); and auditing nearly all customs entries before CBP submission with error rates below 0.2% (Flexport Customs Technology Suite, launched October 2025). The Equitable Growth Institute analysis of generative AI in logistics found that freight transportation arrangement services exhibit the highest AI exposure of any logistics industry, with most tasks potentially decreasing in duration or more. The employment story is not yet one of displacement: BLS projects growth from 2024 to 2034, driven by e-commerce volume and trade-compliance complexity. But the nature of the work is bifurcating rapidly: routine document handling is migrating into software, while exception resolution, carrier relationship management, and regulatory judgment are concentrating in the human role.
Effect on the work
The Equitable Growth Institute (2025) analysis found that freight arrangement and customs brokering services exhibit the highest AI task-exposure of any logistics industry analysed. Whether this translates to employment decline depends on volume growth: in a high-volume e-commerce environment, agent-per-shipment ratios can fall while total agent headcount rises.

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Cargo and Freight Agents employment and pay by year

On record since1836

Latest US employment97,670 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Latest US median pay$52,260 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Outlook+6.2% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

View all 27 years of cited US data, each linked to its source

Year	US employment	Annual pay (median unless marked)	Source	Report
1942	12,000	n/a	Est., LinBIS Researched context	Report
1978	58,000	n/a	Est., Mercatus Center Researched context	Report
1990	76,000	$22,000	Est., IPUMS USA (employment) Researched contextEst., FRED (pay) Researched context	Report
2000	64,320	$28,560	BLS OEWS 2000 Official statistic	Report
2003	61,770	$31,990	BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statistic	Report
2004	70,000	$34,250	BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statistic	Report
2005	78,730	$35,860	BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statistic	Report
2006	84,340	$37,110	BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statistic	Report
2007	81,380	$37,060	BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statistic	Report
2008	85,950	$37,270	BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statistic	Report
2009	82,440	$36,960	BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statistic	Report
2010	81,390	$37,150	BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statistic	Report
2011	80,570	$38,210	BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statistic	Report
2012	78,750	$39,720	BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statistic	Report
2013	73,760	$40,250	BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statistic	Report
2014	77,480	$41,380	BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statistic	Report
2015	81,120	$41,870	BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statistic	Report
2016	88,920	$41,920	BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statistic	Report
2017	89,920	$41,820	BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statistic	Report
2018	92,280	$43,210	BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statistic	Report
2019	95,810	$43,740	BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic	Report
2020	96,510	$43,770	BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic	Report
2021	85,750	$46,910	BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic	Report
2022	93,480	$46,860	BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic	Report
2023	105,220	$48,330	BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic	Report
2024	97,800	$49,900	BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic	Report
2025	97,670	$52,260	BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic	Report

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Where cargo and freight agents go next

Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers

Ledger, bill of lading, telegraph (pre-electronic coordination era)Ledger1836–1920

Telex, airway bill, and ICC rate tariff manuals (interwar and postwar regulated era)Telex1920–1977

Air cargo deregulation + container standardisation (rapid volume growth era)Air cargo deregulation + container stan…1977–1990

EDI and automated customs entry (ACS, 1984; ACE development, 1994)EDI1984–2000

Cloud TMS, CargoWise, and real-time shipment visibility (integrated platform era)Cloud TMS2000–2020

Agentic AI platforms (Raft, Wisor, Nuvo AI, Flexport Customs Suite)Agentic AI platforms2022–present

Cargo and Freight Agents employment and pay by year

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