Twenty-five years ago, Brian and Pam Light, our founders, published the first issue of Truck News.

It was a basement business that blossomed, through a lot of hard work and late nights, into one of North America’s top trucking publications. To begin, 25 years in business is indeed reason to raise a glass. No doubt, the market has gone through some roller coaster times…from cyclical recessions of the ’80s and early ’90s to the booming subsequent years, we’ve seen it all.

Although our parent company also publishes 40-odd other magazines, and we work alongside 200 fellow employees, we still function as a separate business unit.

The real benefit of working for a large company has been the luxury of tapping into resources that normally wouldn’t be available to a small independent publisher. A good example of this is our Web site, www.trucknews.com. You’ll see a number of features that wouldn’t be there if not for our talented I.T. department.

As with most businesses, the real reason behind our success is people. Turn to page five and you’ll see the names of our staff, the vast majority being long-term employees. They consistently put work before their personal lives, scheduling vacations around publication deadlines and industry functions.

In 1981 I was selling advertising in a competitor’s publication. I recall one chance meeting I had with Brian Light outside an advertiser’s office.

Brian, being the confident young entrepreneur he was, obviously had a crystal ball when he tore into me about the future of the publication I represented.

As fate would have it, he was right. That magazine died a slow death during the early ’90s (long after I left I might add!) and Truck News continued to thrive and prosper.

Brian’s brother Ted took over the reigns in the early ’90s and was a huge part of the magazine’s success. Ted, well known for holding court over a few – or more – Blue Lights, could always be counted on to voice his opinion. We became good friends and still are to this day.

As the times changed, so did we. Newsprint became gloss, spot colour became four-colour, and 28 and 32 page issues became 88, 96, 104 and 112.

I’d like to thank our advertisers, suppliers and especially our readers for making Truck News their publication of choice.

We are committed to helping your businesses grow now and in the future.

We hope you enjoyed the ride back. I know we enjoyed putting it together!