CT&L: Congratulations on being named to the prestigious list of the 50 Best Managed Companies Award for seven consecutive years. But I noticed you are not standing still when it comes to fine-tuning your operation. About a year ago you announced the start of your temperature control division. You had owned temperature control equipment and been servicing customers for years. Why did you now decide to separate this part of your operation from your general freight offerings?

Seymour: Food is a big part of our business and always has been. But because of its nature, the transport of temperature-controlled products can be risky if not properly administered, either by the driver or the operations people asking the right questions of the customer for temperature settings. Operationally we needed to use dedicated drivers and dedicated operations folks to minimize the risk and to truly demonstrate our commitment to that service. I think customers are encouraged by the fact we have divisionalized our offering and really put the proper core competencies in place to manage it very effectively. We also have more equipment on order this year to grow the business. We have about 70 units this year and we plan to add about 15 more.

CT&L: What are the challenges you face in moving food products across the border?

Seymour: We established in the last 12 months a customs department headed by a customs specialist so that we are always aware of what is going on and able to deal with it proactively, be it through training or technology. Our ultimate goal is to make the border as seamless as possible for our customers and our drivers. Those who are really naïve about the regulations or not capable of staying ahead of the game are the ones suffering with the long waits. We know that if we didn’t do what we are doing we wouldn’t survive. But the reality is not everybody, including our customers, is fully aware of the investments the industry is making towards keeping the border seamless. It’s those investments we are making that are helping and the shippers’ participation is paramount.

CT&L: You’ve formed a partnership with St. Lawrence College to introduce a Leadership Certificate Program. Can you elaborate on what this is about and why you felt it necessary to participate?

Seymour: One of our initiatives through our strategic planning process is to invest in our people and that means all of our people, whether they drive trucks or support those that do. We felt that in years past much of our energy towards investment in people has been toward those who drive our trucks and we also wanted to invest in other areas of our business. So we partnered with St. Lawrence College to develop a leadership program as a way to invest in our people who don’t drive trucks but are future leaders in our organization at the supervisory or middle management level. There are components within the program that are quite relevant to the areas of personal development and management development. There’s about 15 people involved and rather than having them going off in different directions, every second Tuesday they participate together in the program and there are opportunities to learn together. I would like to think that the more we invest in our people the more awareness we create around the need for continuous improvement and relationship management and service excellence. These are all important parts of the leadership development program. It’s not just showing people how to be leaders, it’s helping them understand why leadership is important and why they and the people they lead will be business differentiators for us. Investing in people ultimately translates its way through to the customer. It’s a wise investment.

CT&L: Any new improvements to your technical capabilities for 2007?

Seymour: There are certainly some involving the ACE border initiative. We are compliant already and using ACE with customers capable of doing so with us. In the past year we also invested in a yield and margin tool that helps us better identify which customers, lanes and rates are contributing positively or negatively to our margins. Our industry for a long time has really managed revenue either by emotion or by the market and whatever it will bear. We decided through our strategic planning discussions that we needed to be more sophisticated than that. We may continue to price our business the traditional way where that’s all the market will bear but it’s better to know what exactly is going on by customer and by lane than to say that’s just the way it is. Ultimately we need to be reasonably satisfied that everything we do for everybody we do it for is contributing to the health of the organization and this has been a powerful tool to help us along those lines.

CT&L: You’ve personally taken a more visible role within the industry, assuming the role of chairman of the Ontario Trucking Association. What do you see as the main challenges you and your customers will have to jointly solve in coming years?

Seymour: There is just an unrelenting pursuit among shippers to reduce costs. The cost to purchase and operate equipment is going up, our labor cost is going up, and the cost of fuel is all over the place. We are challenged as an industry to reduce our costs so we can’t go to our customers and continually offer savings. Instead, we need to eliminate waste – at the border, on transit time, at the pickup, during delivery, etc. Together our customers and their chosen suppliers need to help us find ways to do so. If we can work together to eliminate waste and inefficiency that by itself will provide two benefits: it will allow us to either keep our costs down or maybe even reduce them and secondly it will help attract and retain people to this industry by minimizing frustration.