About Trans-System International Company

A Texas firm delivering integrated IT, software, railroad technology, and firearms-industry services since 1996.

Since 1996 · Weatherford, Texas

Our Story

Trans-System International Company was founded in 1996 as a railroad operations and implementation-services firm. Our earliest engagements were on the Class 1 freight railroads — design, deployment, and operational support for the systems that move trains across North America.

From railroad operations we grew into a broader technology-services practice, bringing the same operational discipline to clients outside the rail industry. That work led us into IT consulting for small and mid-sized businesses — the day-to-day technology management, security, and strategic guidance that keep growing companies running.

As client needs expanded beyond infrastructure, we extended into software development — custom business applications, Odoo deployment and integrations, APIs, EDI, automation, and the glue code that makes a stack of tools behave as one coherent system.

In 2023, we ventured into our fourth practice with the establishment of our FFL 0702 Class 07 manufacturing facility under FFL 5-75-367-07-6M-25045. ITAR-aware manufacturing, customer transfers, electronic bound-book operations, and compliance consulting rounded out a portfolio that today spans IT, software, railroad technology, and firearms-industry services — all under one accountable team.

Weatherford, Texas

Our home in Weatherford, Texas sits in north Texas, about thirty miles west of Fort Worth. Incorporated in 1858, Weatherford is one of the older towns in the state and serves as the seat of Parker County.

Weatherford is known as the "Cutting Horse Capital of the World" — recognized worldwide as the historical and cultural center of the cutting-horse industry, with several national-champion cutting horses bred and trained on the ranches that surround the town.

The town is also home to First Monday Trade Days, one of the oldest continuously operated open-air markets in Texas — a tradition that dates back to the 1800s when farmers and traders gathered around the courthouse square on the first Monday of each month for livestock, produce, and barter. Today First Monday remains a monthly fixture, drawing visitors from across the region.

Weatherford is also widely known for its Parker County peaches — locally grown and a summer tradition for nearly a century — and it remains a central hub for Texas equestrian, agricultural, and Western heritage communities.

How We Work

Phases, not promises. Every engagement starts with a written plan broken into discrete phases — each with clear deliverables, acceptance criteria, risk assessment, and a documented rollback path. Clients see the same project status board we use internally; there is no separate "sales version" of the truth.

One source of truth. Cost estimates, schedules, risk registers, and test plans all derive from a single project plan. When scope or status changes, it changes once and propagates everywhere it appears — no spreadsheet at headquarters contradicting the dashboard, no dashboard contradicting the invoice.

Compliance built in, not bolted on. When an engagement touches ITAR, EAR, PCI DSS, CJIS, FFL bound-book retention, or any other regulated workflow, we treat the regulatory requirements as a primary input to design — not as a checklist applied at the end. Audit logging is wired before features ship; recordkeeping rules are encoded in the system, not in an SOP binder that gets forgotten.

Reversibility as a discipline. Every change is designed to be undone. Database migrations rehearsed against staging copies. Configuration captured as versioned artifacts. Off-site backups tested before they're relied on. Production is never the place where a change is tried for the first time.

Vendor-neutral by choice. We don't take commissions. We pick the tool that fits the problem and the budget — and we'll tell you when the right answer is a free utility, an in-house script, or sticking with the system you already have. Our advice is paid for by the hour, not by your future purchases.

One team, end-to-end. From the first scoping conversation through the day the system goes live, the same people stay involved. We don't hand projects to a junior team and disappear. The senior accountability that scoped the work stays with it.

Brief, written, and frequent. Short status updates, clear written decisions, and the discipline to raise concerns before they become surprises. We'd rather flag the issue at 3 PM Tuesday than explain it on Friday's call.

Leadership

Donald Mader — President & CEO

Don comes from a long line of railroad history dating back to the founding of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway (ATSF) in 1859 — from lone German immigrants who started in the ATSF shops as boilermakers on steam locomotives, to Assistant General Managers of the ATSF Northern and Southern Divisions. Railroad has been baked into Don's DNA as the family business.

Don's own railroad career began with Santa Fe Terminal Services in Pearland, Texas, while attending the University of Houston. From there he moved into railroad contracting with Mi-Jack Services, working in Los Angeles, Kansas City, and Chicago. He then traveled Canada from west coast to east coast implementing the Canadian National Railway's RSR operating system — which CN had purchased from the ATSF.

In 1996, Don opened Trans-System International Company and continued his railroad work with BNSF Railway through the ATSF/BN merger, supporting three major system integrations since then. Through that work Don diversified TSI into outside IT services, software development, and most recently FFL Class 07 manufacturing services.

Across thirty years of railroad, technology, and compliance work, Don has built the kind of instrumental partnerships that customers can't deliver alone — direct working relationships with the Class 1 carriers, the Association of American Railroads, Railinc, and a deep network of operational, IT, and regulatory specialists.

Don's view is that delivering on a customer's expectations is rarely the work of one team alone. It requires the right partners, applied with the right discipline, and held to the same standard of accountability as the prime contract itself. That conviction shapes how TSI scopes engagements, picks vendors, and stands behind the outcomes we deliver. When a project depends on six relationships across four organizations to land, we treat all six as first-class commitments — not as someone else's problem.

At 59 years old, Don has no plans on slowing down and will continue to build TSI into the future.