Curt LaLone knows milk.
The president of Mount Pleasant, Michigan-based MLT Transport is a fourth-generation dairy hauler. His great grandfather, Leo LaLone, started hauling canned milk in 1929; Curt’s grandfather, Morval LaLone, transitioned the family to bulk-milk transportation; and Curt and his father, Cornell LaLone, broke off MLT—formed in 1989 as the over-the-road division of Morval LaLone Trucking—as a separate farm pick-up operation in 1997. Today, MLT transports nearly 4 million pounds of milk from farm to factory everyday using 87 trucks and 128 tank trailers.
In short: Curt’s got milk. Technology, however, is a different animal.
“I’m a trucker in a trucking family,” Curt said. “I know how to move milk like nobody’s business. I also know TMS systems can make our jobs much easier now—but computers are not my forte.”
That’s why MLT still used pens, paper, spreadsheets, and mental math to schedule collections and dispatch drivers until meeting the exceptional team from M2X, the provider of a cloud-native transportation management system (TMS) tailored for specialized fleets, including milk and fuel haulers. “They’re not computer guys who act like you don’t know anything,” Curt quipped. Critically for LaLone, they gave him the chance to “drive the vehicle” before buying it.
“We test drove a few others in the past, but none of the legacy TMS providers, who focus more on the freight side, could grasp the farm-pickup inventories we keep,” he lamented. “It’s too complex. So we couldn’t easily make those systems work for what we wanted to do.
“M2X is the only company that showed interest in letting us help build the system.”
Farm-forward technology firm
Andrew Wallace and Rob Mandeno, a farmer with a banking background, started M2X in 2015 in Auckland, New Zealand, with the goal of using advanced technology to digitize and optimize complex agricultural operations, starting with livestock movements from farms to processing plants. “New Zealand’s pretty much one big farm that produces large amounts of meat and dairy exported around the world,” said Senja McCloy, M2X chief product officer based in Aukland. “So they saw a lot of scenarios in which trucks were running around empty or partially loaded, because they stop at a lot of farms, and coordinating the work was complicated. And the more they dove into it, the more they understood the planning challenges, and how manual they were to solve.
“There wasn’t a technology out there that provided a solution because there are constraints specific to agriculture and livestock that most technology companies aren’t interested in solving.”
After several years of research and development, M2X went live with Silver Fern Farms, New Zealand’s largest meat processor, which operates a network of 200 trucking firms. “They digitized all their paper-based processes, removed Excel spreadsheets, and reduced all the phone calls and manual work; and then they rolled out our optimization technology to automate the scheduling of all inbound livestock into their plants across all their carriers, which now saves them about 15% of their total mileage across the network each year,” McCloy said.
M2X next targeted dairy haulers, and quickly onboarded Open Country Dairy, New Zealand’s largest independent dairy manufacturer. The company now serves businesses across five key verticals: Livestock, dairy, liquid and dry bulk, general freight, and energy, the newest segment, where M2X already assists several large fuel haulers in New Zealand and Australia. Today, M2X enjoys “strong market penetration” in New Zealand, with about 500 haulers using the system—including 95% of the livestock-hauling market—and Australia, where 65% of dairy flows move through M2X’s multi-tenant, software-as-a-service platform.
“The way we’ve approached industry is to provide transportation management software that also functions as an ecosystem for their entire supply chain to work together digitally,” McCloy said. “So our system includes different applications purpose-built for each stakeholder.”
M2X entered the U.S. in 2021. The fast-growing global technology firm now has 70 employees and offices in Auckland; Melbourne, Australia; Denver, Colorado; and Atlanta, Georgia. “We’ve got a great team that’s hungry to solve difficult problems—which is to our customers’ benefit.”
MLT-informed TMS
James Turner, M2X U.S. general manager, and Harry Hornabrook, M2X vice president of client solutions, moved here from New Zealand to spearhead their push into the U.S. market. Like their approach back home, they started with livestock haulers after recruiting Shannon Treichel, a Texas native who started her ag-focused career in animal pharmaceuticals. M2X now serves Caviness Beef Packers, Beef Northwest Feeders, Foote Cattle Company, and Preferred Beef Group.
MLT was M2X’s first dairy and tank truck customer in the U.S.
Their teams met at the International Milk Haulers Association’s 2022 convention in Lubbock, Texas, where the M2X team went to research the idiosyncrasies associated with U.S. dairy operations, and identify a collaborator who could help tailor their TMS for American milk haulers. “We are very selective in terms of who we partner with,” Hornabrook said. “We wanted someone who was representative of the market, but also actively looking to improve their processes. For us, that was Curt and his team at MLT Transport.
“They’ve been a great partner—and massively influential in terms of how the product has evolved.”
M2X and MLT began working together in September 2023, and MLT went live on the platform in April 2024. MLT now uses M2X’s advanced software to monitor customer inventories, forecast demand, auto-generate farm pick-up schedules, and track loads in real time, all of which optimizes operations while reducing human error. “It cut down on our dispatch time tremendously,” said Curtis Cross, MLT dispatcher and HR manager. “Now we can build plans far more efficiently.” Easily digested information, like bills of lading and pinpoint delivery details, streams seamlessly out to drivers through M2X’s driver app, which drivers use to quickly transmit data back to office personnel, accelerating “order-to-cash” settlement.
Most importantly, LaLone credits the platform for enabling MLT’s expansion.
“I knew the way we were doing things wasn’t going to last. We just couldn’t keep up,” LaLone said. “Since implementing M2X, we’ve grown exponentially—and we’ve only been able to do that because we streamlined processes substantially since coming on board with them.”
System implementation
LaLone was eager to make a change—as soon as he found a workable solution. Other small to medium-sized carriers are hesitant because implementing a new TMS requires considerable time and resources. But decision paralysis is the antithesis of forward-thinking management.
“The biggest challenge we run into is a non-decision,” Treichel said.
“Change is hard, technology change can be harder, and getting your people to adopt modern technologies, and like them, can feel impossible. But once they get through it, we know they’ll be happy.”
The adoption process begins with an in-depth cost-benefit analysis, which includes quantifying pain points and comparing current processes to M2X-optimized outcomes to illustrate return on investment. “Our onboarding process starts with mobilizing our project team,” Hornabrook said. “We’ve gone through initial discovery at that point, so we understand the fit. Then it’s more about the products they’ll be using, elements associated with system configuration, and integrating with other software, such as telematics, payroll, and accounting.”
M2X’s implementation team leads customers through the transition, provides user-acceptance training, and identifies a “super user,” or internal advocate, who helps co-workers embrace the system. The subscription-based service also includes an account manager, technical support, and regular software updates. “We can get ahold of Harry any time of the day,” Cross said. “He’s always on it. And if he can’t help, he’ll find somebody who can.”
The M2X-MLT collaboration is ongoing. MLT still is fine-tuning how managers and dispatchers utilize the system; and M2X is building out mapping capabilities, expanding technology integrations with customers and vendor partners, and preparing its all-inclusive supply chain ecosystem to house MLT’s growing refrigerated division. “Many businesses have multiple trucking segments, and they want one transport management system to cover their entire operation,” McCloy said.
As Treichel affirms, they’re “not afraid of complex problems.” That’s why the company continues to grow at a rapid pace.
Midwest Dairy Transport, another Michigan-based milk hauler, now runs on M2X, and the company expect the first two U.S.-based fuel haulers to go live on the intuitive platform in the second quarter of 2025. “U.S. growth is a huge priority for our ownership,” McCloy said. “So that’s a big focus for us, in terms of where we’re investing our time and development resources.”
LaLone is convinced tank truckers will reap the rewards. He knows bulk hauling—and believes M2X customizes transportation technology for specialized operations like nobody else’s TMS business. “Their dispatching tool, which drivers use on their tablets or personal devices, is impressive. It’s user friendly. We haven’t had any drivers complain about using it,” he said.
“Everyone here took to M2X very easily.”
