How Texas Carriers Started Running More Miles with Less

Three Companies. One System. Zero Spreadsheets.

About Texas Carriers

‍‍Texas Carriers is a Laredo-based transportation company founded in 2014 by Emiliano Martinez with a simple but ambitious vision: build a transportation company from the ground up and scale it. Today, Texas Carriers operates a full cross-border freight business alongside a US brokerage and a sister company handling the Mexico-side operations. Three companies, one operation, and a team that runs some of the most complex freight lanes in North America.

The Problem: Nine Sheets, Zero Visibility

Cross-border freight is already complicated. Every load has multiple legs and at Texas Carriers, each of those legs had its own Google Sheet. Nine sheets across departments, each owned by a different person, none of them talking to each other.

Their TMS existed, technically. But in practice, it was only used for two things: paying drivers and invoicing customers. Any actual operational visibility lived on those sheets. "People were uploading their rate con information in the system, uploading that same information on a Google Sheet, updating the Google Sheet, and then forgetting about the system," says Emiliano. "At any point of the day, if you wanted to see through our system what was going on at Texas Carriers — it was not up to date."

The double data entry was exhausting, but the deeper problem was structural. When it was time to close a load to pay a driver, that load disappeared from view. No more visibility into the trailer, the equipment, the timeline — it was just gone. Which meant trailers sitting idle, equipment going untracked, and accounting teams reopening closed loads just to see what was happening. "You'd have an order open from 15 days ago and there it is open — but the customer already has a POD and everything," Emiliano explains. "We could never run reports off Google Sheets or see what was actually going on with our company."

Meanwhile, dispatchers were sitting in a silo. Each person had their sheet, their little world. The Mexican team couldn't see what the border team was doing. The border team couldn't see what the US team was doing. Nothing tied together.

"We were hungry for a centralized operating and reporting system. Before that, it was nothing close to it."
‍— Emiliano Martinez, President & CEO, Texas Carriers

There was also the question of the future. Their old system had no innovation roadmap, no support, no sense of what was coming. "We were going to be stuck in that system," says Luis. "No innovation."

Finding Alvys: A Technology-Driven Company

When Texas Carriers started evaluating options, what caught their attention about Alvys wasn't just the features: it was the trajectory. "It was a very technology-driven company," says Emiliano. "We felt like if we got on this train, we'd be able to develop and grow as technology becomes more critical."

They moved fast. From signing on to going live took one month. They started October 1st, live on Alvys by November 3rd. "I guess it was quick," Emiliano says, "but that was how hungry we were. We really just needed to get out of what we were doing and find a new way of operating."

The After: One Screen, One System, Three Companies

The first thing that changed was the mental model. On Alvys, the same departmental structure Texas Carriers already used, Mexican operations, border crossing, US line haul, still existed, but now it lived inside a single system that everyone could see and update in real time.

"On Alvys, everyone is focusing on what they have to do, but uploading a load as they go because they're focused on their trip," says Emiliano. "You're able to just focus on what your specialty is."

And critically, closing a portion of the trip to pay the Mexican sister company no longer meant losing visibility on the rest. The border crossing leg stayed open. The US line haul stayed open. The system kept moving even as the financials were being settled.

"You never lose that visibility just because you have to pay someone. That has been huge, huge, huge."
— Emiliano Martinez, President & CEO, Texas Carriers

The transition wasn't without growing pains. Alvys was innovating fast — sometimes teams would learn a new workflow and then find it had been updated the following week. But the updates were always improvements. "[The team] were okay with it because it was even easier," Luis says.

"There isn't one thing on Alvys that I don't have that was on those Google Sheets," says Luis. "Once [our team] actually saw that, there was no turning back."

Now the morning operations meeting, which used to be a roundtable of hearsay, runs off Alvys, live. Every customer service rep projects their Alvys view and walks through exactly what's crossing the border, what's loading in Mexico, what's in the US, and what's due tomorrow. The system does the talking.

"I tell my team: let the system tell me it delivers tomorrow. You worry about keeping the system up to date, we'll make it happen."
‍— Emiliano Martinez, President & CEO, Texas Carriers

The Results: More Miles, Fewer People

The operational shift showed up quickly in the numbers. Texas Carriers downsized their operations team by 10–15 people — not through layoffs, but through natural attrition they simply didn't need to backfill. Fewer trucks, fewer trailers, more loads, more miles.

"We're running more miles, getting more loads in, with less people, less trucks, and less trailers," says Emiliano. "It's crazy."

Customer satisfaction climbed too. With double data entry gone and everyone focused on execution instead of spreadsheet maintenance, the team had more time to actually talk to customers. "What are these people doing with their time? They're paying more attention to our customers. That's what they're doing."