Doin’ it His Way

Rick Way is one of those people who can pinpoint the exact moment their lives changed forever.

Now the owner of a 30-truck fleet in Guelph, Ont., WayFreight Services, Rick first hopped behind the wheel after finishing high school several hours north of there in Sudbury. Not long after, he began working for Servall — then a division of Kingsway Transport and one of the largest truckload carriers of its time — where he came off the road to do dispatch and sales. But in 1992 Servall went bankrupt and closed up shop.

“Here I was at 42 years old with a family. What am I going to do?” Rick recalls. “Well, I always wanted to start my own business, so I did.”

Rick didn’t waste any time putting the wheels in motion. In the preceding months, while still employed at floundering Servall, he began surveying prospective drivers, making contact with potential customers, and talking to suppliers and the bank. He also hired a lawyer and found a silent partner. It was now September of 1992.

Deregulation was still in its infancy and the economy was sinking from the recession. Servall had just closed its doors, and some of what it left behind, WayFreight wasted no time in picking up.

“The customers were the easy part,” says Rick, adding that the company pulled out of the gate hauling mainly concrete pipe with 18 former Servall owner-operators. “Basically, as long as I could maintain the service and the drivers, they didn’t care who the cheques were made out to.

“The financial end, however, was a nightmare. The bank wanted just about everything but my sons for collateral,” he says.

Luckily, he was able to convince shippers — probably afraid their freight was going to be left on the dock in the wake of the Servall closure — to prepay in advance. The quick cash flow, not to mention Rick’s re-mortgaged house, helped alleviate some risk for the bank.

Going with owner-ops from the start was a given since Rick and his partner didn’t have the capital to support 18 of their own units. But in 1995, with good operators getting harder to come by, Rick responded to customer demand for more local capacity and bought his first two company trucks: 1995 Eagle Internationals with Detroit Diesel power. In the following years, he continued to finance tractors and buy trailers outright with profits.

These days Rick doesn’t haul for even one of the customers on any of WayFreight’s six original invoices framed on the wall in his Guelph office. With a mix of owner-ops and company drivers, vans and flatdecks — hauling raw and finished material both regionally and on cross-border long hauls — WayFreight is as diversified as a fleet its size can get.

“A customer can call for a van in the morning, and then a flatbed or a multi-axle specialized trailer in the afternoon,” says Rick, adding that he also dabbles in oversized heavy-haul. “It’s all about not passing up opportunity. People would call and ask if we could do something. Even if we didn’t, I wouldn’t necessarily [decline]. If it looked like it could be good, then I’d say let’s do it.”

Located between Toronto and Windsor, just a couple minutes off Highway 401, Rick operates in a rich but overcrowded market where dozens of large competitors breathe down your neck. But Rick says he likes being a small fish in a big pond just fine, and he’s never had a problem finding his niche.

“We do different things. While [the big fleets] can supply volume, many can’t provide the kind of versatile service we can,” he says. “We’re much better geared to responding quickly to a customer’s needs because of our size and personalized service, which is (accented) with low claims and extremely low turnover.”

A True Enthusiast:

It doesn’t take long to figure out the kind of guy Rick Way is. His office alone gives you big clues. On his shelves are rows of model tractor-trailers — 86 to be exact — along with some collected antique military paraphernalia. There are pictures of his wife and three sons on his desk, and framed shots of racing cars and trucks on one wall.

On the adjacent wall hangs a row of John Wayne portraits. Rick loves the Duke because his flicks are about a time where there was “no mistaking who the good and bad guys are.”

Rick’s a genuinely jolly guy, mild-mannered, even a little shy. But he’s also a blue-collar trucker who exudes self-confidence. He’s the underdog who isn’t afraid to punch above his weight class when he needs to.

“He’s larger than life, not just around here, but to anyone who knows him,” says Rick’s eldest son John, a dispatcher at WayFreight.

The influence that Rick’s own father had on him is unmistakable. Also a trucker, the late Leo Way comes through in Rick’s nostalgia for the preceding generation, and through all the adages Rick heard from his father and repeats to this day. Rick admits some are now clichés, but adds, “There’s a reason they got to be that way.”

It’s clear that Rick took those life lessons to heart, says Cheryl Mooney, Rick’s administration manger. “He knows what works, but is open to ideas from just about anybody around here,” she says. “He’s also a leader that knows when he needs to take control of [the situation].”

Rick not only likes to play like the big boys — taking no guff about implementing rate hikes and accessorial charges when the market demands it — he likes to play with their toys as well. Not too many small fleets employ GPS satellite tracking, or analyze loads of monthly truck data downloaded from each truck engine’s ECM.

Rick says the information helps drivers improve and, in turn, cuts his costs. “It’s one thing to go to your customers and get rate increases, but you also have to find ways to take care of your own backyard,” he says.

When he’s not making sales calls or studying ECM data, Rick likes to indulge in some personal vices. He loves car racing, and sponsors a stock car in Southern Ontario’s ALSTAR racing series. But perhaps his favourite hobby is to rescue decrepit, rusting work trucks from the 1950s and bring them back to life. He’s got a ’53 Mack and a ’56 White slumped in his yard. The Mack should be restored by next year, while the White — if the decaying chassis and popping seat springs are any indication – will take a bit more work. “Don’t worry, I’ll get’er,” Rick says confidently.

And then there’s the fully restored ’52 GMC show truck, his real pride and joy. Oncoming traffic could spot his grin 50 yards out when he’s driving it. He absorbs every smile from dazzled pedestrians and returns every passing trucker’s nod.

“It’s kind of corny but these trucks need to be saved,” says Rick, who invites employees, truckers, friendly competitors, even a couple of magazine editors to sign the Jimmy’s inside door panel. “At the truck shows you see an older fellow walk by, and you watch him go back 50 years in his head right in front of you. I love that.”

Rick Way is 55 now. In 12 short years, he’s survived everything from deregulation to a heart attack. As for the next 12, he says he has no desire to expand to the point where he’d crack Today’s Trucking’s annual Top 100 For-Hire Carriers list. Maybe at the most he’ll add 10 trucks by the time he retires. After all, there’s no reason to disturb the pond when the water’s just fine.