MONTREAL — A year and a half after its first stirrings, a Quebec-based driver association has signed up more than 1,000 members and is making its presence known in a big way across the province.

The official name of the organization is the Association of Professional Drivers of Quebec (APRQ) and under the leadership of President Martin Boivin, the group intends to be a powerful voice.

“There is a huge need in the industry to represent the drivers and improve their working conditions,” Boivin told Today’s Trucking.

When the APRQ General Manager Charles Englehart talked to us after ExpoCam — which Englehart described as “a very successful weekend; I think we signed on lots of drivers” — he said APRQ would be willing to help drivers in other parts of Canada organize their own groups.

Membership in APRQ is $99 a year, and it’s the same price for staff drivers or owner-operators.

Membership entitles drivers to a raft of benefits, including access to group insurance.

In Quebec, in order to qualify for the group coverage, truck driving had to be ­identified as an official trade. APRQ made that happen.

Englehart says having the trade designation was among the organization’s first big victories.

Other issues on the table include speed limiters (they’re against them) and paperless logs (the jury’s still out).

Boivin says he was pretty pleased that Quebec’s Minister of Transportation Sam Hamad invited the APRQ to consult on issues last fall. He described the 45-minute meeting with Hama as “amazing.”

“Our biggest challenge now is to make ourselves known,” Boivin says.

Boivin, Englehart, and all the other executives are working drivers as well as ­association leaders.

The non-profit group is completely self-supporting and receives no grants from any level of government.

“It’s good, because this way, we can represent our members the best way possible without owing anything to anyone,” says Boivin, who is actually the fourth generation of a trucking family.

And Englehart adds that knowing that the membership consists of hard-working financially astute drivers makes the executive even more conscientious.

“Our members are watching our every move,” he says. “So we have to make sure we use their money wisely.”