AI skeptic turned agent builder: Spartan automates 17% of dispatch day

One AI agent now builds the hourly customer reports that Spartan Carrier Group's four-person dispatch desk used to assemble by hand — and by VP of Operations Kendrick Dawson's estimate, it frees 17% of a dispatcher's day. Two years ago, he thought the idea was crazy.

"At the time, all of us looked at him like he was absolutely insane," Dawson told FreightWaves at Trimble Insight in San Diego last month, recalling founder and CEO Carlos M. Llanes Jr.'s first push into AI. "We're like, bro, it's never going to happen. What are you talking about? Two years later, here we are."

The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier runs about 150 trucks, 400 trailers and 170 drivers, hauling just-in-time automotive freight with Toyota as its biggest customer. Alvys named Spartan an early customer when it launched Foundry in August, a tool that lets carriers build AI agents inside its transportation management system.

How do you double volume without hiring dispatchers?

Spartan runs a 24/7 operation with four dispatchers: one per shift plus one covering weekends and gaps. Dawson's test for any new tool is blunt. Could the carrier double its volume without adding a dispatcher?

"We don't want to let anybody go, we don't want to fire anyone. That's not the point," he said. "It's how can I maximize my operation with the same headcount that I have now, and allow those people an opportunity to grow and learn to do different things."

His reasoning is practical. To teach someone a new skill, he first has to free up their time.

"I have a hard time believing that anybody goes into logistics because they want to look through PDF documents, or they want to look at a screen all day long and just press a button," Dawson said.

What did the first agent replace?

A couple of Spartan's customers demand status updates in a set format every hour, on the hour. A dispatcher built each report manually in Excel, taking seven to 10 minutes on average and up to 15 for a newer hire. At double the volume, the same report would take closer to 20 minutes. When Dawson asked dispatchers in July which single task they would eliminate, every one named the hourly route updates.

The build moved fast. Dawson met once with an Alvys staffer to learn Foundry and once more to hand off the report. A sample came back in about two days; the agent was live within a week and a half. He forgot he'd switched it on until his inbox filled during the operations team's 9:30 a.m. call.

"Literally 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, perfectly on time," he said. The automated reports matched his dispatchers' "almost 100%," and he planned to start sending them to customers the following Monday.

The math scales. "If I knock out two more that are similar in weight or capacity, I just gave them half of their day back," Dawson said.

How did Spartan get to 150 trucks?

Llanes bought one truck and grew the fleet through five, 10 and 20 units until it hit the 50 trucks its first contract required. Spartan began hauling directly for Toyota in 2023 with 5% of one location's freight. It now handles about 30% of the freight at one plant and 20% at another, and is one of 12 motor carriers in North America running directly for Toyota, serving plants in San Antonio and Blue Springs, Mississippi, plus a group at the Mazda Toyota Manufacturing plant in Huntsville, Alabama.

Why is driver payroll the real test?

Spartan's second agent targets payroll, and it has not been tested yet. Drivers get a flat weekly guarantee for five days of work, and most freight moves on relays — a Detroit-to-San Antonio load can pass through six solo drivers, with handoffs in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Shepherdsville, Kentucky; Memphis, Tennessee; Arkansas; and Dallas.

When one driver runs late, hours-of-service limits push the whole route back each day. Managers pull in on-call extra-board drivers to protect Toyota's schedule, and drivers who lose a day through no fault of their own still must be paid. Field teams reconcile it against Samsara ELD logs and their own notes, which usually takes an entire Monday.

"Driver workforce is the number one most important thing for any logistics company," Dawson said. "But in order for them to be happy, you can't mess up their payroll."

The planned workflow would email field teams daily with every driver missing from the dispatch planner, ask whether to log a call-off or an unplanned extra-board day, then add an approval to the planner and a line item to the settlement report, with a weekly summary of every decision. Dawson expects it to cut payroll time at least in half.

Can operators build agents themselves?

Spartan moved to Alvys from a prior TMS Dawson called "not as innovation focused." Alvys staff built the first agent with him; for payroll, he planned to start editing the Foundry workflows himself and wants dispatchers and field operators doing the same.

"I'm not a tech guy, I'm not a coder, I'm not a data scientist. I just run trucks," he said. The first template needs only a customer name and a choice of report format. "If I got 25 customers tomorrow, I would just say, what template do you want, A, B, or C?"

Payroll is harder. "So far, it seems relatively intuitive, but there's some nuances that I think are a little bit difficult," he said, calling it the real test of the platform. "If I can get that one down, we're going."

If the payroll agent lands, Spartan has a repeatable template for scaling toward its next fleet milestone on the same headcount.