BOUCHERVILLE, Que. (Nov. 15, 2004) — At least once every couple weeks, Claude Robert climbs into the cab of a Volvo VN and delivers a load.

The trip serves many purposes. First of all, it gets Robert out of his Boucherville terminal and reminds him of where his money comes from. He also gets to tour the tarmac on which he has built his empire. Finally, the trip gets a load delivered.

That’s one reason Robert, the president of Groupe Robert, the seventh largest fleet in Canada according to the Today’s Trucking Top 100 rankings, can elaborate on pretty much any part of trucking or trucks you’d care to mention. You want to discuss the old Mack 237s? How about the tax advantages of leasing over owning? Not only was he born into the business that his father Rosario started in 1946, Robert is an accountant by profession. He knows trucking from the axles to the annual reports.

Moreover, this man, who oversees a fleet of more than 1,000 tractors, 3,000 trailers and 1,800 staff, commands the respect and admiration of the industry. He’s opinionated — and he’s opinion-causing. Nobody leaves a conversation with Robert unaffected.

As one of his employees said last summer after Robert received the Al Paladini Canadian Transportation Person of the Year Award, “Claude leads by example and is prepared to go to the mat for his team. He is also one of those rare people with a warm heart who can keep a cool head.”

But don’t let the cool head fool you. Robert’s a fighter. He’s also what you’d call a real trucker. He drives his business with verve and has some very strong ideas about how the gears should be shifted — and about who’s shifting them.

“Take the drivers,” he says. “Those people are expected to spend days far from their families. Then they meet customers who are rude with them because they are five minutes late, after driving all night,” he says.

“People at receiving and shipping must learn to see the drivers as collaborators, as prolongations of their company. Otherwise, we will direct our drivers to customers who respect them. The others will not get service from Robert Transport.”

Shippers, he says, will have to change their approach and modify their windows of shipping when it comes to hours of service. “The drivers don’t have to compensate with their hours of service the incapacity of some shippers,” he says.

If you ask him if he is ready to sacrifice profits for quality, Claude Robert answers yes. Really, he means it. “It’s not to say that I’m ready to neglect efficiency and profitability though. But, to my eyes, quality and security are fundamental, non-negotiable items.”

Always looking for new challenges and new projects, “although they are not always economically profitable,” he hates routine and is constantly searching for movement, for him and for his troops.

“Repetition creates boredom and complacency. It’s the enemy of motivation. Within the company, there are always four or five projects in progress, either with our customers or our employees.”

One thing is clear: Anybody who thinks his fleet will grow naturally are making a big mistake. “One must always be progressing, but at a rhythm corresponding to the economical evolution, to the capacity of the economy to absorb the growth,” he says.

“The progression must be moderate but stable.”