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How Crapo LTD swapped spreadsheets for a TMS, and got a software team that actually picks up the phone
When Braxton Crapo stepped in to support the Crapo family trucking business, he inherited two things: a fleet that had grown from six trucks to forty-five in a few decades, and a back-office workflow held together by spreadsheets, paper envelopes, and the muscle memory of people who’d been doing it that way for years.
The system worked. Until it didn’t.
“Before Toro, it was all very just slow and clunky,” Braxton says. “Everything was on Google Sheets or Excel. Invoicing was done out of Excel. We were all very pen and paper.”
By the time the Crapos started looking for a transportation management system, they had roughly 3,000 unbilled loads on the books– a backlog that was costing them cash flow, peace of mind, and weekends. Today, that number sits below 500. And the way Braxton, his uncle David, and the rest of the Crapo team describe Toro, the software is only half the story.
“Toro is more of a partnership than just someone that sold us a product and then walked away.”
- Braxton Crapo, Operations Manager
The Crapo LTD Story
Crapo LTD started, as owner David tells it, almost by accident. In 1989, David was running one of the family farms in southeast Idaho when a local bark supplier asked if the Crapos might buy his trucks so he could focus on the bark side. They did. They started with six trucks. Over the next three-plus decades, that number climbed to twenty, then forty, then forty-five.
“We are farmers first and foremost. That’s our roots,” David says. “But the trucking business has been such a big part of it, and it’s helped support the farm.”
The relationship side of the business runs deep. Many of Crapo’s mechanics and office staff started as drivers. “Family comes first,” David says. “If the family’s happy, the driver’s happy and productive.” That instinct shows up with customers, too. When a bark supplier’s bin runs dry, they’re not selling bark. “It’s very important to them. So we have to keep their bins full.”
That commitment to relationships is exactly what made the Crapos so particular about who they trusted with their operations.
The Challenge Before Toro
Years before Toro, the Crapos took a chance on a different TMS. It didn’t go well.
“We bought a system, and within about a month, I just told everybody, ‘Hey, this is not working. We’re taking more time putting everything in than it’s helping us on the other side,’” David recalls. “We just threw it in the garbage.”
So the team went back to what they knew: Excel and Google Sheets. Loads were entered manually. Truck numbers were attached to loads on a spreadsheet, and when plans changed, someone had to remember to detach them. When they didn’t, loads slipped through the cracks.
“If you put a truck on a load on the spreadsheet, and then you had to make a change and you forgot to take the truck number off, you just assumed the load had been delivered,” explains Brett Levitt, dispatcher and safety manager. “Then the customer would call wondering where their load was.”
Braxton’s workflow tells the same story from the back office. Orders were copied from email into Google Sheets, then into Excel for rates, then into another sheet for invoicing, then printed. “There’s a lot of room for error there,” he says. Tickets came in by paper envelope, often two weeks after the load was delivered. Braxton remembers loading up a backpack of envelopes for a family trip to St. George just to keep up.
A Technology Solution and Partner in One
When the Crapos started shopping again, they were cautious. They had a list of TMS options and a list of scars from the last attempt. What sold them on Toro wasn’t a feature comparison... it was how Toro showed up.
Toro sent a team member onsite for implementation, which freed Braxton to dig into invoicing while the dispatchers were trained at their own desks. “That was invaluable to us,” Braxton says. “In order to do it right, you’ve gotta just jump into it."
Driver adoption was the part the Crapos worried about most, and also the part that surprised them most. “The drivers we thought would have the biggest issues with Toro are the ones that use it perfectly,” Brett says. “They picked it up and ran with it."
Amy Angel, who handles invoicing for the trucking fleet, sees the same pattern from the back office. Amy and team are able to share ideas, feedback, and issues with the Toro team whenever something comes up. She says, "You know somebody’s gonna take your idea into consideration, and they’re gonna do their very best to make that come to life. That is unheard of in my mind.”
“The thing that shocked me the most was the people. They were open to helping us solve little nuances that we needed in our system that maybe they hadn’t seen in other fleets, and they worked with us constantly for a long time.”
- David Crapo, Owner
A Bright Future Ahead
Today, with Toro up and running smoothly, the everyday wins compound. Brett uses load templates and the dispatch calendar view to plan service days and time off in advance. Amy is no longer tethered to the office and can work from anywhere (even the beach!). Braxton's biggest unlock is being able to look up from the day-to-day and focus more on his growing family.
And David, decades past that 1989 handshake, frames it the way only a founder can: “The marriage between Toro and Crapo has been phenomenal on our part. They’ve been really good to help us, and it’s excelled us way out in front of what we were doing before.”
When asked what would happen if Toro disappeared tomorrow, the answers from the team were unanimous (and not subtle).
“I would cry,” Brett says.
“It would be panic mode,” Braxton adds.
“Don’t take Toro from us,” Amy says.
Sounds like a partnership.