BREAKING NEWS: Al’s Cartage shuts its doors

KITCHENER, Ont. — A fixture fleet in Ontario has gone broke.

Senior managers of Al’s Cartage, an 80-year-old family fleet based in Kitchener, Ont., are spending today trying to figure out where they go from here.

Days ago, the carrier’s fuel supplier cut it off because the company could no longer afford to pay the bills. And last night, employees and drivers were told not to bother showing up for work.

"We just ran out of money so they shut off our fuel. You can’t run a truck without fuel, so that was it," President Norm Frohlich told Todaystrucking.com this morning.

He called it "a sad day" for the family, the company’s employees and the local community, of which Al’s Cartage was a staple.

The carrier simply couldn’t withstand the one-two punch of skyrocketing fuel costs combined with the slumping North American auto industry, Frohlich said. Throw in a high Canadian dollar and weak U.S. appetite for other export products, and the end was inevitable.

A traditional LTL and container carrier, the company made a huge mistake by going after auto parts work a few years ago, Frohlich admits. It wasn’t long before Al’s was "squeezed out" of the cutthroat sector. "It cost us a lot more than it was worth," he says.

Bye Al’s: The carrier simply couldn’t survive the
combination of fuel prices and ever-weakening cross-border business.

Al’s tried to revert back to its old lanes, but to little avail. "We were pretty well back to where we started, but we just couldn’t get the volume back up fast enough. The expenses were there, but the volume wasn’t."

Before closing shop, the company had withered to about 50 employees, down from 230.

A couple of survival strategies were attempted, but in the end, says Frohlich, the company couldn’t be saved. "We just kept getting deeper and deeper — and I was foolish enough to put in a lot of my own money — so we figured that was enough."

Al’s was founded by Frohlich’s father Ernest in 1936. He bought a single truck and hauled groceries and department store packages to a small number of customers in Kitchener.

In 1993, Norm’s other son Roger propelled the company into the international market, where it became a successful player in cross-border LTL, and niche truckload segments.

Ontario Trucking Association President David Bradley says he laments the end of Al’s — a pioneering OTA member — but admits he isn’t surprised by the news given the current economic climate.

"The demise of a company such as this is surely a reflection, at least in part, of the difficult times the industry is experiencing. But, each company is different and therefore the degree to which a company can withstand the current market conditions is dependent upon a variety of factors," Bradley says. "However, it is clear that a restructuring of the industry is underway in both Canada and the U.S. As I have said before, capacity will adjust one way or another. "

So, what do the Frohlich father and son team do next?

"We look for a job," Norm Frohlich says with a thin laugh. "I’m 65 so I don’t think I have to look too hard. I told Randy to get a government job."

At least the market didn’t take his sense of humor.