Alliance Ground International Brand Guidelines: Miami’s 1987 Cargo Handler & Lone Star

A cargo handler that grew onto the ramp.

Alliance Ground International, which trades as AGI, says it was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in Miami. The same founding year and base appear in trade coverage, including Cargo Airports & Airline Services in February 2026. On its website the company calls itself “one of the fastest growing, US-owned, ground handling companies in North America,” providing ground, cargo, mail handling and security services, and it uses the line “The Airport People.” FreightWaves described it in September 2024 as “the largest American-owned cargo handling agent for airlines.”

Cargo is the core of the business. AGI’s website says its cargo arm has been “known as The Cargo People for over three decades,” and its service list runs from aircraft loading and unloading and pallet build-up and breakdown to dangerous-goods acceptance, temperature-sensitive cargo, de-icing and load control. A mail unit, AGI Post, says it handles Priority Mail under the USPS and FedEx Priority Mail contract at AGI’s US locations.

By October 2021 AGI was owned by the investment firms Audax Private Equity and Greenbriar Equity Group, FreightWaves reported, and handled cargo for 55 airlines at 13 airports. That month it bought Maestro International Cargo, known as MIC Cargo, a Chicago O’Hare handler whose flagship account was Emirates SkyCargo; FreightWaves described AGI as the largest cargo processor at O’Hare and said the deal added warehouse space and cold-storage capacity.

From freighters to the terminal.

The growth continued in 2022. Cargo Airports & Airline Services reported on 12 September that year that AGI had acquired Airport Terminal Services (ATS), founded in 1975 in St Louis, Missouri, with more than 5,500 employees and 49 locations in the United States and Canada. ATS brought passenger, ramp and cargo handling, aircraft refuelling, de-icing and lounge and concierge services, and gave AGI its first passenger operations. Before the deal, the magazine said, AGI and its sister companies Cargo Force and TSCS worked at 25 US airports with more than 5,000 employees, and over the previous eight months AGI had also announced the purchases of Maestro and of a business it called TAS. AGI’s chief executive described the company to the magazine as “a dedicated cargo handler and freighter ground handler” that wanted to build its presence on the terminal and passenger side.

The passenger side now carries its own names. AGI Ground says it offers check-in and ticket-counter services, baggage handling, cabin cleaning, pushback and towing, and claims “five decades of passenger service experience,” with airport lounges under the WingTips name and concierge services under Airport Butler. AGI Secure offers round-the-clock security services for cargo warehouses and aircraft, the company says.

Warehouse space has grown too. In September 2024 FreightWaves reported that AGI had won a competitive selection to run its first warehouse leased directly from Los Angeles International Airport, alongside six other LAX cargo facilities it subleased with more than 500 employees. In April 2025 AGI announced that it had been awarded a 27,000-square-foot cargo warehouse at Toronto Pearson, a former Canada Post facility won through a tender run by Realterm, which the company said would sit alongside its existing ramp and passenger operations at the airport, and in January 2026 it announced the acquisition of JetStream Ground Services, adding cargo warehouses at Charlotte, Providence and Palm Beach that it said it would fold into its existing cargo platform, with shared training and technology systems.

How ground handlers present themselves.

Ground handling and airport-service firms work out of sight of most travellers, on aprons, in cargo sheds and behind check-in desks, so their public identity is built mostly from their own websites, press releases and careers pages. The companies in this guide load and unload aircraft, check in passengers, move baggage, build and break down cargo pallets and, in some cases, fuel aircraft, usually under contract to airlines rather than in their own name.

Photography does much of the work. Handlers publish pictures of ramp and terminal staff in branded uniforms and high-visibility vests, of tugs, belt loaders and pushback tractors in company colours, and of warehouses lined with pallets. Where a handler runs lounges or premium passenger services, those pages show the brand in front of travellers rather than airlines.

The second staple is the network. Station maps, airport counts, staff numbers and annual figures for flights, passengers or tonnes appear on almost every corporate site, and they change often as contracts are won, lost or bought. Service lists follow a common pattern, split into ramp, passenger, cargo, mail and fuelling work, though each company names and groups them in its own way, and the counts in this guide are given as each company or a dated source states them.

Recruitment is the third. Ground handling depends on large shift-based workforces, and careers pages, training academies and values statements sit prominently on these sites. Ownership is often a story of acquisitions, airline spin-offs and investment funds, so the guides that follow give dates and sources for who owns each company.

A new owner in 2026.

Ownership changed in 2026. On 22 January the Dallas-based investment firm Lone Star Funds announced that an affiliate of its Fund XII had signed a definitive agreement to buy AGI from Greenbriar and Audax, Dallas Innovates reported; terms were not disclosed. Cargo Airports & Airline Services noted in February that the deal was still subject to customary closing conditions, and on 28 March Pulse 2.0 reported that Lone Star had completed the acquisition. Greenbriar now lists AGI as an exited investment. At the time of the deal, Lone Star described AGI as working at more than 60 airports in North America with more than 12,000 staff, with air cargo handling as its core business and passenger terminal and ground handling services alongside.

The company’s own website gives more than 12,000 team members and 62 airports in the United States and Canada, together with figures for kilos handled and departures served. It sets out its values as “The AGI 7,” a list of seven principles headed by safety and including respect, teamwork, service and what it calls global citizenship, and it says more than 70 percent of its executive team began their careers in the industry. The site is organised around its four service lines, cargo, ground, mail and security, with separate pages for job applications, station listings and tracking an air waybill.

For a design guide, AGI shows how a cargo specialist can present itself around people rather than freight as it moves into the passenger terminal. Compare Worldwide Flight Services, another large cargo handler in North America, and Menzies Aviation. For this guide we use a harbour teal, cargo slate and a ramp orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Alliance Ground International’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.