On January 30th the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA) along with online driver training company, CarriersEdge, released their annual list of the Best Fleets to Drive For. The list, in it’s seventh year, recognizes those companies that provide their employees an outstanding place to work.
To make the list, companies have to be nominated by a driver or owner operator that works for them and they must have 10 or more trucks in their fleet. Once nominated, these companies are scored on a many different criteria taking any aspects of their business into consideration. These include such things as salaries, health benefits, career advancement, driver turnover, fleet safety score as well as a slew of other factors.
This year was a bumper year for Canadian trucking companies. A total of five Canadian companies made the Best Fleets to Drive For list and two other fleets received honorable mentions for demonstrating innovation in their driver programs.
Here are the Canadian companies that made the list:
- Bison Transport – Winnipeg, Manitoba
- Erb Group – New Hamburg, Ontario
- Kriska Holdings Ltd – Prescott, Ontario
- Liberty Linehaul Inc – Ayr, Ontario
- TransPro Freight Systems Ltd – Milton, Ontario
- Challenger Motor Freight Inc – Cambridge, Ontario (honorable mention)
- Drive Logistics – Windsor, Ontario (honorable mention)
One thing that stood out to me was that a lot of these companies are practically in our own backyard. Just a stone’s throw away from the BigRoad offices we have: Erb, Liberty Linehaul, TransPro, Challenger, and Drive Logistics.
To discover why Southwestern Ontario is a such a hotbed of trucking innovation, I asked Teresa Barclay, Human Resource and Safety Manager of Liberty Linehaul Inc, a few questions:
What makes Liberty Linehaul a great company to drive for?
Asking our drivers why they love Liberty, they would say we treat everyone like family. Liberty is a company with huge heart. We pay our drivers well, offer great benefits, bonuses, Safe Driving RSP contributions and a pension plan.
How important is safety and compliance to your company?
We pride ourselves on having the best mechanics and great equipment that always maintained. We also hire drivers with great attitudes and excellent driving records. Safety is number 1.
Does your company use any kind of electronic logs and have you meet any resistance from your drivers about using them?
Our city drivers are using electronic logs and a few drivers on the highway, without any resistance.
On behalf of everyone at BigRoad I’d like to congratulate all the fleets that made the list and to thank them for helping to drive innovaton in the industry while improving the image of trucking in the public eye.