The Hadland family

TORONTO — One reason why Dale Hadland was chosen as the Highway Star of the Year for 2008, was because the Beachville, Ont., is serious about working for improvements in the industry.

"I, too," he wrote in a letter of thanks to the judges, "want safe roads, and for the rules to be enforced evenly across the board. After all," the letter says. "My family is on the road, too."

And that one sentence hearkens back 15 years to a tragic rainy August afternoon. Hadland, a flatbed driver with Mackinnon Transport at the time, was on a run to Indianapolis. His dispatcher called and told him to call home.

Turns out Hadland’s wife Kris had been with their three kids, baby Hooper, three-year-old Brittanya, and the middle one, Dexxter, who is now 17. Somehow Brittanya had escaped her mom’s grip, took a few steps ahead of the others, and was hit by a car.

Hadland caught the first flight home. It was only when his brother-in-law picked him up at Toronto’s Pearson Airport that Hadland learned Brittanya "didn’t make it."

You might say Hadland has had his share of hard knocks but sometimes, he’ll tell you, knocks open doors.

"Losing a child like that is the hardest thing you can go through," he says.

Hadland, who today drives for International Freight Systems, was selected as this year’s Highway Star of the Year, not because he lost his daughter, but because he’s a model owner-operator. He’s got more than 23 years and two million accident-free miles under his buckle. He runs a methodical and efficient business, and he’s involved in as many community organizations as one man could be, and what’s more he loves driving.

As painful as it is to lose a child he says, he thinks it borders on selfish to grieve. "The way I look at it is, she’s resting now. She’s not suffering. She just got called home a little earlier than the rest of us. For me to complain is selfish."

The Good Guy Gene:

Whether that means helping out and trying to use his Red-Cross skills at a roadside car accident ("I’ve come across a number of real awful ones," he says) or helping raise money for the Special Olympics by participating in the World’s Largest Truck Convoy each year, Hadland evidently carries the good guy gene.

Joanne Ritchie is the director of the Owner-Operators’ Business Association of Canada (OBAC). Hadland’s a life member.

"Dale never asks what can the association do for him," she says. "He’s more liable to ask ‘what can I do for the association?’"

Dale got a $10,000 cheque for being named
2008 highwaySTAR of the Year

"Besides being a very sharp business person and helping out at shows, he’s always ready and willing to share his knowledge," Ritchie says.

Sharing, to Hadland, comes naturally. Recently, he and his son Dexxter traveled to the remote city of Iquitos, Peru, — population about 400,000. Iquitos claims to be the most populous city in the world that can’t be reached by road. You have to either fly in or boat up the Amazon. Dale and Dexxter, carting two hockey bags apiece, full of medical supplies, flew.

Once there, they helped build a church and assisted local medical teams. But Hadland had to take time from work and pay their own way down.

And again, even though he was witnessing some of the worst poverty in the world, he accentuated the upside. "Iquitos is four or five degrees south of the equator and I really wanted to see if water goes down the drain the opposite direction in that hemisphere," he jokes. "From what I saw, when you’re that close to the equator, it doesn’t spiral at all."

The only reason he can take time off the road is that he runs his operation in a very business-like manner. He pays himself a salary and doesn’t start spending more just because there’s a bit of extra dough coming in. Or not.

"My income goes up and down like a yo-yo. But I pay myself a consistent salary each week so you know how much is coming in. That way if you get something extra it goes into an RRSP but you also know when to save.

He’s been active in the co-op insurance company at International Freight Systems, has served on the safety committee at IFS, and has since been nominated and elected to the company’s board of directors. It’s a non-profit organization into which they pay regular premiums, but if members don’t get into accidents, they can recover their investments.

He also says he tells whatever trucking company he’s working for that his family comes first. So it’s weekends at home for the Hadlands. Again, he says, he wouldn’t be able to insist on it if he didn’t run his owner-operator lifestyle with paramilitary-like discipline.

"I know guys who have mortgages on their houses and their trucks and they’re running six and seven days a week. If it ever came to that, I’d find another line of work." And he has no intention of doing that.