Logistics (TSL)

The position of the sector in Poland 2026

Poland is one of the largest markets for logistics services in Central and Eastern Europe. The sector covers domestic and international freight forwarding, road transport, intermodal rail transport, warehousing, and 3PL and 4PL operators. The sector's operating margin is historically low, the result of price pressure and fuel costs, which makes every process optimization critical to the P&L.

The top logistics operators have deployed enterprise-class WMS and TMS systems. The rest of the market consists of companies of 10 to 200 people whose stack is industry forwarding tools (Trans.eu, Timocom, Teleroute) plus Excel as the consolidation layer.

Four use cases with documented potential

A synthesis of McKinsey's Future of Logistics 2023-2025, Gartner's Supply Chain Top 25 (2025 edition) and the WEF's Reshaping the Future of Supply Chains (2024).

Automation of CMR documents and waybills. Computer vision plus an LLM to parse international transport documents. Cutting handling time from a dozen-plus minutes to a few minutes per document. This is the simplest use case to deploy in the industry, because the input data (a photo or scan) is uniform and the output (a JSON structure for the TMS) is well defined.

Route optimization. AI that accounts for real-time traffic, drivers' working hours (Regulation 561/2006), queues at loading ramps and seasonality. McKinsey reports that mature TMS deployments achieve a measurable reduction in fuel cost and driver time. It requires telematics data quality, the absence of which in older fleets makes fast scaling harder.

Shipment delay prediction. Models trained on historical routes plus real-time data (traffic, weather, customs queues) predict delays several hours in advance. That gives time to communicate with the client and change the unloading slot.

Counterparty risk assessment. Models that analyze payment history, data from the National Debt Register (KRD) and market signals (court registers, insolvency proceedings). Critical in an industry with long payment terms and low margins, where a single counterparty's insolvency can wipe out a quarter's profit.

Regulatory specifics

Regulation 561/2006 governs drivers' working hours. AI that optimizes routes must account for mandatory breaks and weekly limits. That rules out naive "shortest path" algorithms.

The EU Digital Strategy introduces new data obligations in 2024-2025: the Data Act, which governs access to data from IoT devices (including telematics), the Digital Services Act for intermediary platforms, and the CSRD, which requires ESG reporting (transport CO2 emissions).

The AI Act of February 2026 classifies decision systems in public transport as high-risk. B2B logistics mostly does not fall into that category, but customer service chatbots require transparency (notice that the conversation is with an AI).

CBAM (the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) introduces, from 2026, an obligation to report the carbon footprint of imported goods. Logistics companies handling imports must have systems to measure CO2 per shipment. AI helps attribute emissions to specific deliveries.

Three bottlenecks for Polish TSL companies before implementing AI

First, fragmentation of systems. A typical Polish forwarding company operates on three to five different tools (TMS, WMS, ERP, exchanges, mailing) that do not integrate automatically. The data exists, but in silos.

Second, the absence of data engineering as a competence. IT focuses on maintaining systems, not on integrating them or building an analytics layer. AI without data integration is impossible.

Third, a weak culture of measuring process KPIs. Many companies do not precisely measure order handling time, warehouse rotation time or the unit cost per kilometer. Without a baseline KPI, measuring AI ROI is impossible.

What yesfor.ai brings that is specific

We have two of our own products operating in the TSL space: CBTL, an industry database with hundreds of thousands of companies registered in the TSL sector, and EXCORE TSL, an operational platform with modules for freight forwarding. Our knowledge of the industry comes from building products for it, not from a research desk.

A yesfor.ai audit for a TSL company takes two to four weeks. The result: an AI Readiness Score, a list of three processes with the greatest AI potential, and a twelve-month roadmap. A fixed price set after a short discovery call.