In Gear - Today's Trucking

The very day this issue of Today’s
Trucking’s Top 100 was going to
press, an announcement came
out of Calgary. The Mullen Group
Income Fund (number six on our list of the biggest for-hire fleets
in Canada) amalgamated with Producers Oilfield Services Inc,
which is Number 16.
We cannot officially adjust the charts until the plan passes
through regulatory approvals and gets the nod of assent from
shareholders, but otherwise, it looks like a done deal.
Just chalk it up to another day in the mercurial business
known as Canadian trucking, right? Yet another big income fund
stragically consumes a smaller competitor, right?
Wrong.
Did you happen to notice that the company the Mullens purchased
was actually the 16th largest for-hire fleet in the country?
Bigger than Transfreight, Yanke or Reimer? And that you probably
never heard of the company before?
The Mullens, you’re familiar with. And they always seem to be
in growth mode. Indeed, in January they announced another
purchase—that time they bought Pe Ben Oilfield Services Inc.
But Oilfield Producers Services? As Seinfeld would ask, “what’s
up with that?”
Ric Peterson is what’s up with that. He’s 46, an entrepreneur out
of Grande Prairie who grew a fleet-of-foot outfit called Formula
Trucking from zero in 1991 to the point where in 2004, his
2004 6
CANADA’S TOP 100
WEST
yo!
WARD
company—with 278 employees, 506 trailers,
184 tractors, 32 trucks and 19 owner-operators—found
its way onto the Today’s Trucking
Top 100 list.
Fifteen years ago, Peterson saw the opportunities that awaited
companies who could provide special services to the oil patch in
Northern Alberta and he started providing mud, rigs, camps and
anything else the exploration teams needed.
“The first three years were pretty tough going,” he told Today’s
Trucking, “but then things started happening.”
Things started happening indeed. And now, as we take a look
at the state of the trucking industry in Canada, Ric Peterson is not
the only one with his eyes on western wealth. Everybody’s facing
that direction.
When we last compiled this list, nobody thought that a single
hurricane could disable more than half the American fuel supply
in one quick storm. Then Katrina hit. Prices went wild. George W.
Bush declared that the American economy can no longer remain
“addicted” to unstable foreign oil sources. And you can be confident
that Mr. Bush considers neither the Oil Sands of Alberta
foreign nor the government of Stephen Harper unstable.
The oilpatch. For one thing, the boom is exacerbating the
driver shortage because workers who might otherwise choose to
drive for a living are being lured west because of the high wages.
There’s uncertainty in other parts of the trucking industry, too.
continued on page 48
BY PETER CARTER
A look at the Top 100 for-hire fleets of
2006 shows that even though you’ll
be paying more for diesel, the oil
itself will be helping truckers prosper.
MARCH 2006 37