After 15 years of success in Mexico, logistics company president Carlos Canales has expanded the Trancasa brand to the United States. Trancasa USA began operations in Pharr six months ago and now offers its customers freight transportation from Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley to cities across Texas, including Dallas, Houston and Laredo.
Since the formation of Trancasa in 1994, the company has grown to a fleet of over 300 trucks that operates out of two ports in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas, and Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, and employs 500 individuals. The company currently transports freight for Fortune 500 companies such as Wal- Mart, Home Depot and Sanyo to cities across Mexico.
Canales was born and raised in Rio Bravo, where he attended primary and secondary school. As a teenager, his family sent him to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi to the prestigious prep school St. Stanislaus College to complete his junior and senior years of high school. After graduation in 1989, Canales joined the family business in Rio Bravo, where his family has a long history in farming grains and cattle.
“We started the trucking business so that we could move the grain and cattle to the stores we sold to in cities like Monterrey and Guadalajara. In 1990, we started with five trucks and by 1994 we had grown to 20 trucks. But the economy in Mexico was coming down, and the dollar was very high compared to the peso, so I sold everything and kept just two trucks to start over again,” Canales said.
The second time around, Canales changed his strategy and decided to move his focus from the farming industry to the maquiladora industry. In 1997, Seagate became his first maquiladora client and he continued to gain more clients from Reynosa, growing to 20 maquiladoras by 2011, including Motorola, Nokia and LG.
Prior to establishing Trancasa USA, Trancasa specialized in helping the maquiladoras transport their products from Reynosa to the trade zone, where another carrier would then carry the goods to the next destination in the United States. Now, under Trancasa USA, they are able to move goods across the border and on to its next destination in Texas.
“Our goal right now is to grow right here in the Rio Grande Valley and build the success that we have built in Mexico,” Canales said.
Canales said that he brought the company to the U.S. because of his love for the country and the lifestyle. After graduating from high school in Mississippi, he knew that he wanted to live and work in the U.S. Canales also said that the current violence situation in Mexico was a part of the decision to expand the company now.
The strategy that Canales uses to set his business apart from competitors is Trancasa’s investment in safety and security. All drivers are equipped with two GPS devices – one on the truck and one on the trailer – as well as cellular phones. To ensure product and driver safety, Trancasa houses a control center that monitors trucks, check points, loading and unloading 24 hours a day.
All trailers are also equipped with scales along the truck bed to monitor the weight of the freight inside the trucks, and the trailers are monitored with sensors that track the opening and closing of doors. With these features, Trancasa gives its clients the ability to know exactly where each truck is at any given time. Transportation managers regularly receive updates that provide the exact location of their freight.
Canales believes this security and communication approach that made Trancasa an industry leader in Mexico will lead to similar success in the U.S. Many transportation companies use some similar safety and security measures as Trancasa, but not many use all of them. “Many companies call Trancasa because they know that we are always investing in safety and new technology,” Canales said.
The biggest challenge for Trancasa USA is finding drivers that meet the standards that Canales sets for his operations. In addition to the usual licensing requirements, Trancasa USA uses the same model that has been successful in Mexico, requiring its drivers to have background checks, posess mechanical knowledge of the trucks they drive and adhere to Trancasa’s strict safety requirements.
Trancasa USA currently operates 10 trucks from the Pharr terminal to carry freight across the state. Canales said that business is steadily growing and that the demand for Trancasa USA’s services exists as he adds more drivers and trucks to the fleet.
“We want to do a lot of good things here, and we want to do the same things that we are already doing in Mexico. We want to provide a good place for drivers and people who work for Trancasa USA, and I think this is going to be a good opportunity for other companies to work with us,” Canales said.