Past to present: How we came to be

CTS Software has roots as far back as 1982, when our founder, Huck Venters, managed several small transportation properties in North Carolina as Community Transit Systems (CTS).

During the early days, software wasn’t an option—not just for us in the transit industry, but for everyone! If you can’t remember, try to imagine. Not quite the dark ages, but the pen-and-paper-and-electric-typewriter ages. No GPS, no seeing vehicles on maps, no forms that fill themselves out on a screen and you hit a button to send it to an office far away…you get the picture.

At any rate, Huck was an early adopter, and between 1983 to 1986 searched high and low for transit management software. (At that time, computer-based technology was progressing most rapidly in larger fields, like the sciences, banking, communications, and military—not so quickly for the little niche industries like rural paratransit.) He and his team reviewed the few options available at the time, and while they were gathering a picture of what they needed in terms of features and benefits, nothing really met CTS’ needs.

Taking matters into our own hands, we brought on a developer to build a proprietary software package tailored to the needs of our transit providers—it made sense, because we had real and practical experience in the industry, and could craft exactly what we needed to get our job done.

Fast forward a few years to 1993, where our software was working so well for us that it began turning heads among our peers. People were calling CTS not only for rides and management assistance, but to see where we got our software and how they could get it, too! So we sold the transit management aspect of our business to focus solely on our software products, becoming CTS Software, Inc. and beginning to market our Trip Master software suite nationwide.

Through the years we’ve remained a small, tight-knit team, which has allowed us to adapt to the accelerating technology with agility. We’ve built on Trip Master to include modules for just about everything our customers have asked for, and have several more modules and features in the pipeline. We’ve helped our customers transition into mobile data, and are continually staying on top of billing and reporting standards and requirements for the ever-changing economic structures of transit. Our work is truly never done!

When Huck retired in late 2016, two of CTS’ longest-time employees, Adam Fox and Bryan Foster, purchased CTS through their technology company, Foxster Solutions. So while the business structure has changed a little behind the scenes lately, Adam and Bryan are leading with the same principles that have made us the company we are today. Check out our team to get a glimpse of who we are!