BERWICK, N.S. — Paul Easson has been around trucks and trucking all his life, in the family business his father launched way back in 1945.

He’s probably seen a zillion ups and almost as many downs — like any carrier in Atlantic Canada especially — but these days he’s facing a new challenge. And it has nothing to do with the availability of freight for Eassons Transport.

It’s his chairmanship of the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA). Elected to that position earlier this year, Easson doesn’t actually see it as a nasty load on his shoulders, and he doesn’t have a huge agenda that demands lobbying this way and that. In his typically straightforward and laid-back way — he’s a Nova Scotian, after all — he parses things this way: it’s the job of CTA staff to deal with the issues, his role being to motivate and get the best out of the Board of Directors.

"I think the CTA is operating efficiently and the staff do an excellent job. I’m pretty happy with that," he told Today’s Trucking on a sunny afternoon at company headquarters in Berwick, N.S.

“The chairman’s role is to have a well-functioning board with active members,” Easson continued. “In no way do you want to silence the ones who are contributing. The challenge is to draw out the quiet ones."

He points to the lack of frequency of CTA meetings as a hurdle to jump in this effort. “It take a long time for new members to feel comfortable and get productive.”

In general this comes under the association governance label, something he’s been dealing with for some time along with fellow members of the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association (APTA). The APTA hired a consultant back in 2006 to examine the operation and recommend organizational improvements, but changes have been slow in coming. It remains a continuing project. 

Among the issues the industry at large is facing, Easson, a chartered accountant, figures overcapacity is a big one but will fix itself in time. A more knotty problem is on the human resources front. It’s a less difficult matter than it once was, he says, but the industry will need more drivers soon and he’s not entirely sure carriers are ready for it, having trimmed the ranks of recruiters and trainers in the last couple of years.

“We’re realizing the value of good human resources people,” he says, adding that he’s recently beefed up his own HR department. The company has about 180 drivers on its payroll.

General manager at Eassons Transport, Paul seems to have the company running nicely, along with brothers Peter and Tom. The former handles rates and sales, the latter is in charge of the hardware and its maintenance.

The three of them own and operate the company once run by their father Bill and uncle Phil, who had joined the enterprise as a partner in the early 1950s. With duties divided much like today, Bill ran the business, Phil managed the shop. They’ve long since retired.

First hauling apples out of the Annapolis Valley to local markets within Nova Scotia, the senior Easson brothers grew the company steadily over the years, serving the bakery industry among others. The long-haul business became an ever bigger component with the addition of produce loads to Newfoundland and elsewhere in the Maritimes.

At one point in the 1980s, traffic to Newfoundland represented 75 percent of Eassons’ volume. With the demise of the fishery, things changed again and the U.S. eastern seaboard became a key market along with Toronto and Montreal, allowing a neat triangulation, mostly for loads of time-sensitive fresh or frozen food products.

Nowadays, Eassons and its dry van division, Elite Fleet, operate a combined herd of more than 200 trailers, most of them reefers, and some 180 tractors running across the continent, with an LTL service from Toronto and Montreal to Atlantic Canada for dry, fresh and frozen shipments. About 35 percent of their work is cross-border hauling.

Admitting that he hasn’t yet pinned down the solutions, Easson notes that a key issue facing his company is succession planning, as with countless other family-based trucking businesses. It’s not an immediate need but it’s there and it demands his attention.

Retirement isn’t in the picture quite yet, but with a motorcycle parked in front of his office and a small plane languishing somewhere nearby awaiting his attentions, it’s clear that Easson knows what to do with his spare time.

He’s almost never short of a smile on his face, but you get the impression that the smile would be wider and brighter if he had more time to spend with those two machines, as well as with wife Cindy and their three kids. In the meantime the CTA will benefit from his guidance.

— Rolf Lockwood