IN Brief:
- Bison Transport’s fleet and carrier network covers more than 1.2 million miles each day, delivering over 1,300 loads and managing around 350 border crossings.
- A reusable real-time data layer connects APIs, applications, data pipelines, analytics platforms, and legacy systems across on-premises and cloud environments.
- The architecture is intended to support faster deployment and provide the real-time operational context needed for future agentic AI applications.
By Hal Hallsson, Principal Enterprise Architect at Bison Transport
Bison Transport is a rare breed of company that has brought intelligent operations at scale to its transportation and logistics operations. For over fifty years, the company has built a reputation as a leading North American transportation and logistics provider, operating one of the safest and most modern fleets on the road. Its freight shipping operations are some of the largest in scale and complexity in North America, and the company quickly realised its size meant it needed to modernise how information moved across the business to meet the pressure to deliver faster business insights, improve operational visibility, and support new digital initiatives.
Its legacy technology stack was just not designed for this new level of scale or speed, but rather than rip out and replace, Bison prepared its infrastructure for today and for the Agentic AI era to come. Bison Transport lived up to its name and charged through the storm.
Bison Transport’s freight shipping and logistics operations has become one of the largest in scale and complexity in North America. Every day, the company’s fleet of proprietary tractors, trailers, and Top Notch Carriers cover more than 1.2 million miles, deliver 1,300+ loads, and manage around 350 border crossings across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Real-time access to accurate operational data was becoming critical to maintaining service quality, improving decision-making, and supporting new digital initiatives.
But rather than rip and replace everything that already worked, Bison looked to start with the business outcomes they needed, and so it made sense for them to seek the help of real-time data integration leaders, Solace, to modernise how data flows across its enterprise. The aim: to support a multi-year transportation management system (TMS) transition, while enabling real-time data flow without disruption to the business.
Not only did Bison pull off this transformation, but its new modern, real-time data foundation has placed the company in a stronger position to leverage intelligent operations for years to come – and here’s how:
1. Addressing the data bottleneck without causing another one
Every vehicle, driver change, border crossing, and delivery contributes to an increasingly complex stream of operational data. But like many companies, Bison’s data was often siloed or delayed due to batch-based and point-to-point integration patterns.
The company’s biggest challenge wasn’t simply moving data, it was managing the velocity of data between legacy and modern systems. The legacy approach relied heavily on direct database calls, which created performance bottlenecks that could not scale with future growth.
What’s more, any attempt to synchronise old and new systems without a new architectural model would have pushed the infrastructure beyond its limits. No single technology could meet every integration need across APIs, data pipelines, and real-time event streaming. Instead, Bison decided to introduce a modern real-time data platform over time, ensuring day-to-day operations were kept stable effectively.
2. Establishing a real-time layer where business operations meet data
Instead of continuing to build point-to-point integrations, Bison established a reusable real-time data layer that allows systems, applications, and analytics platforms to exchange information continuously across on-premises and cloud environments. This includes a master data approach, where Solace ensures clean, consistent data is shared across Bison’s systems in near real-time.
Bison can now connect APIs, applications, and data pipelines through a shared real-time event layer. This ensures operational systems and analytics platforms receive fresh data continuously, while at the same time, avoiding new integration silos.
3. Instant access to insights that drive faster action, and reaction…
Business outcomes were where Bison started this journey! For a company operating at Bison’s scale, faster information flow isn’t simply an IT improvement. It directly influences how quickly the business can respond to events such as shipment status changes.
The freight company now has operational, transactional, and analytical data at the velocity needed for growth, which reduces the delay between activity and insight. This enables teams to take action faster, make better decisions, and support evolving customer demands.
By centralising real-time event distribution, Bison has reduced integration friction and has positioned itself for long-term scalability – a capability that, among other improvements, is helping the company towards its 2035 goal of reducing carbon emissions per mile by 50%.
… and say goodbye to lengthy deployment timelines
Real-time data flow across business domains has also dramatically improved speed to deployment. Initiatives that previously could take up to a year to deliver can now be introduced in a fraction of that time.
As the technology landscape continues to evolve, Bison now has a more consistent and governed way to share information across systems, providing greater visibility, stronger control, and a scalable foundation for continued growth.
4. Building a stronger future with AI agents working in truly connected operations
Now with its new real-time data foundation in place, Bison has been able to turn its focus towards the next phase of intelligent operations. The company sees data velocity, availability, and accuracy as prerequisites for AI-driven innovation – and real-time data flow has been the connecting piece.
As its systems begin to publish and consume real-time events, the company is building a richer, more connected view of its operations, opening the door to new levels of automation and intelligence. Instead of reacting to changes after the fact, Bison is moving toward a future where it can use the power of agentic AI to anticipate, recommend, and act on operational conditions as they happen.
AI agents usually fail because today’s infrastructure can’t give them the real-time context they need. Bison has now put itself in a position where the real-time data foundation being built to modernise logistics systems can be the foundation for intelligent automation with agentic AI.
One step at a time
Many organisations continue to struggle with moving agents from pilot to production. But it is estimated that by 2027, companies that do not prioritise high-quality, AI-ready data will struggle scaling GenAI and agentic solutions, resulting in a 15% productivity loss.
This will not be a problem for Bison.
The freight company is taking an incremental approach to this transformation, layering intelligent automation onto its existing architecture. Built on event-driven data and observability, this foundation enables the adoption of agentic AI to improve logistics performance, increase responsiveness, and support faster, more informed decision making.
No more detours, it’s time to unlock the real-time data advantage
Bison’s transformation offers an important reminder that integration modernisation doesn’t necessarily mean throwing away everything that came before. Instead, organisations can create an architecture that allows legacy and modern technologies to coexist while shifting the centre of gravity toward real-time, event-driven operations.
For Bison, that means building a technology environment capable of supporting a business that moves at extraordinary scale today, and creating the flexibility to support whatever comes next.
The future of logistics is real-time, and Bison is building the data infrastructure to get there.
