Red over green

The big story in trucking last month was the surge in the Canadian dollar relative to the greenback, something a lot of business commentators have breathlessly called a winning streak.

So how come I feel like such a loser?

Right now the mood at Canadian trucking companies that operate in the United States is somewhere between deep concern over the dollar and full panic mode. After begging for surcharges on fuel, insurance, and security costs, carriers running stateside are working every angle to hedge against the strong Loonie (really a decline in the value of the U.S. dollar relative to just about every other major world currency).

Some of the escalator clauses I’ve heard about – e.g., for every one per cent the Canadian dollar goes up, the freight rate goes up one-point-five – sound like more trouble to administer than they’re worth, especially if you’re a big outfit with a long list of accounts. But hey, it’s a shot. On a $10,000 US job, every one-cent change in the value of the Canadian dollar represents about $250.

The ramifications of the currency issue go beyond lost revenue. There’s the threat of lost business, too. The drop in the U.S. dollar makes imports from countries like Canada-the largest trading partner of the United States-more expensive.

The optimist in me says the inbound lanes might get busier as a result. Then again, maybe we’ll see more U.S. carriers competing for that freight.

For sure, truckers aren’t the only ones sweating. Freight brokers have lost their margin, too, adding to the pressure on pure truck operations that go where customers tell them to go and rely on brokers to fill their trailers on the backhaul.

In the short term, you can enter into simple hedging contracts to protect against currency swings that occur during your typical collection period, whether that’s 30, 60, or 90 days. And if you don’t want spend your money hedging your U.S. revenues, at the very least take steps to collect foreign receivables as quickly as possible. At a time when you may be feeling victimized by the exchange rate, it’s one of the only ways you have left to minimize your currency risks.
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Like the people he writes for, Rolf Lockwood has done a lot of odd jobs in his life. He was editor of an underground newspaper called Subterranean Meadow. He taught poetry to prisoners at Warkworth Penitentiary. He drove a forklift at a steel plant. He was a waiter in the Peter Robinson College dining room at Trent University (“Excellent way to meet freshman girls,” he says).

Rolf’s second-best job, though, is writing about trucks and trucking, something he’s done for 25 years. This month, he will receive the Harvey Southam Career Achievement Award from the Canadian Business Press, which recognizes the highest standards of business journalism and editorial leadership. It’s not an annual thing-last year the CBP withheld the award because they didn’t think the nominees had enough merit.

Rolf is not retiring, and as far as I know, he’s not dying, despite a multi-pack-a-day smoke habit. He has plenty of career ahead of him. What makes Rolf exceptional is how deeply he understands his readers, his craft, and the industry he covers. As a founding partner in the company that publishes this magazine, he demonstrates the sort of entrepreneurship most business editors can only talk about. And he’s flat-out the best journalist covering trucking in North America, an A-list writer with an effortless style that only comes when you’re truly at ease with your subject, your readers, and your ability. If you’ve read Rolf over the years-in Today’s Trucking, HighwaySTAR, Bus & Truck, Canadian Driver-Owner, or Heavy Duty Trucking, among other venues-you know he’s deserving.

Oh, and the best job Rolf’s had? That’s easy: Husband to Sharon and father to Rebecca, Jessica, and Vanessa. It keeps him moving-to karate practice, dance lessons, etc.
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If you read Canadian magazines, you’ve probably seen Peter Carter’s work before. For almost six years, Peter was a senior editor and a columnist at Chatelaine, as demanding an editorial environment as you’ll find in Canada. He’s also edited Harrowsmith Country Life, Financial Post Magazine, and the Toronto-based Metropolitan Business Journal.

And he’s passionate about small family transportation businesses. Peter’s family ran a city bus company in his hometown of Sudbury, Ont. Like a lot of you, growing up Peter pitched in slinging a wrench or sitting at the wheel, depending on the demands of the day.

I’ve known Peter for a long time, and the stars aligned just right for us to hire him as our managing editor. His “other” job is City Dog, a magazine “for yuppies with puppies,” which Peter and his wife publish and distribute around Toronto.

We talk a lot about the quality of our editorial team. But for all the recognition, Rolf is the first to say we can be much better, much more compelling. With Peter, we will be.