Interesting times. More than once during the course of preparing this year’s Top 100, that loaded phrase came up in conversations with fleet owners and managers. “We’re seeing the spark of good things,” says John Huntley, general manager at DCT Chambers in Vernon, B.C. After delaying equipment purchases through some lousy years, he’s hopeful that the chip-hauling fleet will have at least a good spring, and maybe a good year. No one we spoke with says there’s a lack of freight volume-revenues seem strong.

Instead, the backdrop for our 15th annual survey of the for-hire industry’s big guys is whether revenue can keep up with the cost of doing business.

With war looming and no end in sight to the political upheaval in Venezuela, it’s a sure bet that fuel prices will be a dominant issue in 2003. The vagaries of international politics and oil economics are such that predictions are impossible to make — or believe. Even fuel surcharges aren’t a cure-all when, as one fleet owner explained, you set a rate on the first of the month only to have fuel prices hurdle over your surcharge the next day. That happened to him in February, and it’s costing him dearly. Another frustrated general-freight fleet owner told me that on sales of $100 million last year, his profit was $1.2 million. Fuel costs could wipe out that modest surplus in a hurry.

Fuel has drawn fire away from insurance companies. Premium hikes of 15 to 20 per cent are the norm this year. Mark Ram, president of Markel Insurance Co. of Canada, says that’s the result of two things: one, the scramble to recover from years of cut-rate pricing; and two, investments that soured when the stock markets began their slide two years ago.

The massive claims and decimation of the re-insurance market following the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001, haven’t helped, and nor have rising accident costs. That’s especially true in the United States, where a $1 million settlement five years ago now costs three or four times as much.

But insurance companies have to take some of the blame for their predicament. “I don’t have a lot of respect for the insurance industry,” Ram told me recently, citing the lack of intelligent risk assessment evident in policies written by insurers who don’t know trucking.

Many of these companies lost their shirts and have abandoned their trucking portfolios, but not before driving prices down for everyone in the process. Today, he says, the few insurers that still deal with truckers need to make a buck for a change.

Fuel and insurance have always been a heavy part of the cost mix for big trucking companies, but now many face an investment of time and money in something entirely new: security. Nearly every carrier on the Top 100 list operates in the United States and faces new screening requirements from customs and immigration agencies on both sides of the border, as well as demands from shippers.

Even if you don’t haul across the border, your customer the widget-maker could lose its export market if the United States is rendered inaccessible due to border tie-ups. If you haul raw materials into that factory, you could feel the pinch even if your trucks never look south at all.

Following his presentation to fleet executives at a symposium organized by Bandag last month, economist Dr. Lester Thurow talked to me about how perilous the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement has become. The professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management says if Canada doesn’t adopt a common-perimeter security policy with the United States, the border may effectively become a wall.

Such is the extent of American concern, he says, and given the increasingly vitriolic nature of anti-Canada rhetoric down south, it’s hard to see things otherwise.

With the business climate so uncertain, it’s no surprise that most of the growth in the trucking game is coming by way of acquisition. No one has done this better than this year’s No. 1, TransForce. The company, a publicly traded income fund, bought Canpar, Transport Besner, and Transport Mirald, as well as a small Quebec explosives hauler and a freight brokerage in 2002. Its fleet grew from 6,825 total vehicles to 8,100. Last year’s acquisitions join a stable of companies that includes Cabano Kingsway, TST Overland, Papineau International, and an array of other carriers and brokers of general freight, parcels, specialized goods, and expedited cargo.

TransForce is no longer a trucking company, but a true ground transportation operation. And it’s not done yet. “Now, 85 per cent of our activities in truckload and specialized transport are based in Quebec,” says chief executive Alain Bedard. He wants to increase the company’s presence outside the province, and in Ontario specifically.

The company’s penchant for buying stable, profitable operations — big and small — and using incentives to tie up the management team is catching attention. “People realize our acquisitions are well-considered, they keep their own identity, key managers remain in place, and activities are integrated,” Bedard says. “We’re seen as a major consolidator in an industry that’s too fragmented.”

Others made acquisition-related gains on the Top 100 list.

Last month, J.S. Crawford & Son Transport, the Mississauga, Ont., cross-border LTL carrier, completed a “merger of equals” with the Apps Transport Group of Woodstock, Ont., a general freight carrier that operates mostly in Ontario. Called Creekbank Consolidated Motor Freight, the new company has revenues of about $60 million and 325 employees. It’s #62 on our list this year.

The trucking arm of Gibson Petroleum in Calgary bought the assets and business of the ECL Group’s crude-oil-hauling division last year. The company’s business is predominantly moving crude oil from the well to the pipeline or other distribution point, and it plans further expansion. “We’re still going to grow,” says Doug Croteau, vice-president in charge of truck transportation, “mostly through acquisition.” Almost entirely a lease-operator fleet, Gibson now controls some 1,550 vehicles, up from 1,305 last year.

Out in Langley, B.C., Shadow Lines Transportation Group has seen its fledgling van division grow from just a few to 35 tractors in the last year, and it has entered the competitive dry-bulk market in Alberta. A well-funded, aggressive fleet that owns its own terminals and has all employees participating in a profit-sharing plan, Shadow Lines faces a new challenge related to growth: switching from manual dispatching to a computerized fleet management system from Maddocks Systems.

Wrapping up, while there seems to be a consensus that most for-hire carriers will show revenue gains in 2002, much of the short-term future is out of their hands. A war waged on Iraq, which may well have started and even finished by the time you read this, could change everything.