In Gear - Today's Trucking

laws on the books. “Excuse
me for pointing out the
obvious—it’s not fast trucks
or cars that cause the
problems, it is fast drivers.
Personally, I prefer fast
trucks and slow drivers.
Then it is possible to coax
some real fuel conservation
out of your conveyance without
pinning it all the time,”
he says. “The only viable
speed limiter in a truck
ought to be the one in the
driver’s seat.”
And who’s going to pay to
enforce the new enforcement,
Murdoch wonders?
“Are we going to have
another gun registry-like
fiasco where all owneroperators
and small companies
will ‘willingly’ surrender
their vehicles for computer
surgery,” he asks. “Will it
become mandatory that
every time a truck enters a
repair facility its speed
[limiter] will be checked by a
certified technician? And,
again, at the risk of repeating
myself, who is going to
pay for all this?”
— Be sure to monitor
TodaysTrucking.com for
the latest on the speed
limiter decision.
Congestion
Bright Lights, Big
Truck-Free City
It’s no secret that transport
trucks aren’t exactly the
most loved vehicles in bikepath-type
urban centres. So
much so, that two major
Canadian cities are dreaming
up ways of ridding their
downtown cores of trucks.
In Hogtown, Toronto City
Council has referred a
motion to ban all truck
deliveries in parts of the
city’s downtown core to the
Former Freightliner LLC boss James Hebe
has landed back in the commercial
trucking industry after a five-year hiatus.
In an exclusive interview with
TodaysTrucking.com in February, Hebe
confirmed he and a handful of investors have
acquired Co-Van International Trucks Inc., a
full-line International Truck and Engine dealer
in the Vancouver area.
“I’ve always had a desire to stay in trucks and
be involved with the commercial truck side of
the industry,” Hebe says.“We concluded that
being on the entrepreneurial
side, being
involved in the daily
delivery side of the
industry, is where we
wanted to spend the
rest of our careers.”
Hebe’s career now
seems to have come
full circle, as he got his
start with International
Harvester in 1972. But
it was in the 1990s, as
president of
Freightliner, when the
outspoken and
charismatic Hebe made
a name for himself.
Under his watch,
Freightliner rose from a
relatively minor player
to become the leader in
class-8 North American
market share. Major
gains were made
through the acquisitions
of Ford Motor
James Hebe
Co.’s heavy-truck
division, renamed
Sterling, and formerly Kelowna, B.C.-based
Western Star Trucks.
Mired in the most dramatic heavy-truck sales
slump in years, Hebe resigned in May, 2001.Two
years later, he and a group of investors bought
firetruck maker Seagrave Fire Apparatus, from
which Hebe later resigned as well.
While it may be surprising to some observers
that Hebe chose to move across the 49th paral-
HE BE BACK
FORMER FREIGHTLINER HONCHO LANDS IN CANADA
“We’re in love with the West Coast.”
Dispatches
lel, it’s no coincidence, he says, that he finds
himself back in the Pacific Northwest.“We’re in
love with the West Coast,” he says.“There was a
desire to get back in the business on the retail
side. So, when Vancouver popped up, it looked
like the right thing to do.”
Although he has a history at International,
the company was also his chief rival for most of
his years at Freightliner.“Well, no one’s taken
any shots at me yet,” Hebe jokes.
Hebe sees limitless growth for International
in Canada’s western-most province, where the
company has a strong
presence in urban
medium-duty applications
as well as
vocational and utility
sectors.“International is
a company with one of
the best well-kept
secrets I’ve ever seen,”
Hebe says.“With what’s
been done on the
vocational side, and
with the introduction
of the new heavy-duty
highway product (later
this year), it’s all just
growing tremendously
with the product
that’s available.”
It’s unlikely
Vancouver will be
Hebe’s final stop, either.
“One of our top
priorities is to look at
the entire southwest
B.C. market and determine
what it’s going to
take in terms of
facilities, locations and
relationships, to expand our business,” says
Hebe, who wouldn’t rule out possibilities in
Central Canada.
Co-Van International Trucks Inc. has been in
business since 1973 as an International new
and pre-owned truck dealer servicing the
Greater Vancouver market and Vancouver
Island. It employs about 50 people at its
Coquitlam, B.C. headquarters.
MARCH 2006 13