Through dint of its service Ryder won the entire Delphi account with operations at the Laredo border, the hub of the NAFTA highway. Ryder is now charged with taking raw material to the Mexican assembly factories, then returning finished product to warehouses Delphi has both in El Paso and Laredo, Texas. From there product is distributed to Delphi’s customers across the US.

Ryder has now fully expanded operations along the border and is handling some 4,000 truck crossings a week from California’s Otay Mesa border with Tijuana to the Matamoros/Brownsville- Harlingen/Reynosa border along the Gulf of Mexico coast.

Through the experience of outsourcing its transportation needs, Ryder Mexico has developed new skills in solving delivery issues and has attracted valuable transportation companies as partners.

“We use our logistics experience to organize transportation to cut down on costs,” explains Sevilla-Sacasa. He has also learned important lessons and developed a profitable side business that was not on the company’s original agenda.

“Ryder has made a major investment in Mexico in transportation equipment,” notes Sevilla. “We have around 500 trucks, but don’t manage them. We lease them to private companies. When a carrier needs equipment, we rent them those assets. That’s how we managed to increase our investment in Mexico, through renting equipment.”

This is an especially good service for carriers who lack investment capital for trucks. Working with the company they are able to rent well-maintained trucks that are in good shape, which are the property of Ryder de Mexico.

Efficiency begets more work. In 2002 Ryder was ready to pursue business further to the South, into the rest of Latin America. Of course Gene was put in charge of expanding operations to Brazil and Argentina.

Those were “difficult moments,” he recalls, given the fact that Argentina had just undergone one more of a myriad of financial and political crisis. However Sevilla- Sacasa has managed to sail through troubled waters “and both Argentina and Brazil now represent important growth business for us.”

In 2005 he opened operations in Chile. Expansion is now part of the language Ryder uses when talking about South America. “We’re now exploring opportunities in Uruguay, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Peru, ” says Sevilla- Sacasa. Expectations are to tackle “one country per year” within Ryder’s growth plans for the next five years. “Dreaming big is cheap, so we dream big and are moving along,” notes Sevilla.

Some 12 years ago, the most difficult task at hand was finding the right people. “But our advantage now is that in Mexico we have more than 1,500 logisticians,” he claims. “We have very competent people who want to move internationally. If we have the openings, they’ll go to those who we know are competent, those people who can get the job done.”