There's always been freight in game, since launch.
I'm pretty sure that freight wasn't added until after launch. C1 Unless I'm mistaken.
However, they did add one new change quite recently that makes it much nicer. As of now, when you 'freight' an item, it actually "freights" it! Meaning, you no longer have to be in the same town (on both characters) in order to pickup the items you put in. For moving items between chars who are a world away this was a much needed change.