There are people in this industry that the rest of you should thank, and New Brunswick’s Vern Seeley is very definitely on that list. I mean the people who move things forward. The people with imagination, the ones who see where we should be and what needs to be done to get us there. People with the energy and the intellectual — sometimes social — resources to understand what’s required and then do the actual work. I’ll just call them contributors.

We don’t always see these folks in action because they often work behind the scenes, and in fact my mythical list of contributors is probably a lot longer than I imagine. The limelight is not something these people seek.
What marks them all, and my old friend Mr. Seeley is guilty of these terrible flaws, are a love of trucking, a real commitment to its future, and a simple but profound enthusiasm for the job.

Vern’s title these days is specification manager/tech services for the Irving Group’s trucking companies based in Saint John, N.B., which include Sunbury Transport, Midland Transport, and RST Industries. For a very long while, before he retired a few years back, he was maintenance chief at RST, a first-rate tanker operation. Towards the end of his tenure there he beat back a bout of cancer, but that didn’t slow him down much. For the last few years he’s had the spec manager role, which basically puts him in charge of what gets bought and what doesn’t. He’s busier than ever, and if he didn’t have a cell phone and an e-mail address, you’d never reach him.

Like a lot of veteran maintenance men, there isn’t much Vern doesn’t know about trucks and especially about tanker trailers. But I’d guess that one thing separating him from countless others of his vintage is the fact that his knowledge is current. He understands all the latest electronic gizmology and has the resources to test them in real service. He loves to experiment.

That was partly evident recently when he tricked out a twin-53 LCV in order to show Atlantic politicians attending the Council of the Federation meeting in Moncton that Sunbury is a ‘green’ fleet and that long combination vehicles are worth supporting. Vern isn’t alone in promoting LCVs in Atlantic Canada, but he’s been instrumental in the lobbying process.

Sunbury has been operating a twin-53 rig on a run between Saint John and Dieppe, N.B. since 2005 as an experiment, closely studied by provincial transport officials. They are, by all accounts, encouraged by the results.

Not incidentally, a recent study conducted by Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Trucking Alliance concluded that such LCVs used between the Maritimes and Ontario would save 106 million litres of fuel and 297 kilotonnes of greenhouse gases every year and would reduce the number of trucks on the road between six and 10 percent. If the industry is successful in convincing the powers that be to allow LCVs in eastern Canada, you’ll have Vern Seeley — among others — to thank.

Vern is almost alone, on the other hand, in promoting wide single tires. Often in partnership with Michelin Canada’s Ralph Beaveridge, he has worked tirelessly for a few years now to get second-generation singles approved for weights above 6,000 kg. Nova Scotia recently announced it had raised allowable weights for singles to 7,700 kg per axle, and I’m pretty sure you have Vern to thank for that one. He’s hoping that New Brunswick will soon follow suit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they say ‘yes’ just to get my friend off their backs. On this one, like some other pet projects, he’s rather like a dog refusing to let go of a tasty bone. He’s pretty intense at times, Mr. Seeley is, and I can tell you I wouldn’t want to be the convincee.

That drive is evident in his private life, too, though it’s sometimes hard to believe that he allows much separation. An avid snowmobiler, he’s more likely to tell you how fast he got his machine going than about the wonderful countryside he toured on a Sunday afternoon.

Many a weekend for a couple of years leading up to December of 2006 was spent in a much different pursuit, Vern’s crowning glory. Leading a small group of volunteers, he restored a charming wooden church in the long lost settlement of Londonderry, way out in the boondocks near Sussex, N.B. Built in 1856 or so, the church hadn’t been much used since the 1920s and was near to collapse until Mr. Seeley convinced — there he goes again — the big cheeses to fix it up. Shown a contractor’s estimate approaching $100,000 for the job, Vern just said “I’ll do it.” And he did, spending all of $8,000 in the process.

Tireless and passionate, with a lively sparkle in his eye, Vern deserves the attention I’m paying him here because to call him a contributor is to understate things rather a lot. And like I said, he’s a guy we should be thanking. There aren’t enough like him.