The Family Way

Some people are just destined for a life in trucking. “I took my first ride in a truck when I was 11 weeks old. I didn’t stand a chance,” says Tim Boychuk with a nostalgic smile. He learned to walk among the big tractors at Boychuk Transport, the Edmonton trucking company owned by his grandfather John and managed by his father Nick. Tim learned to talk the way truckers talk, to handle a wrench under the hood, and by his early teens he was spending his summers working for the company, which was becoming a major chemical carrier in Western Canada.

Like a lot of kids in a trucking family, Tim Boychuk grew up hoping that one day he’d run the company that bears the name on his Class-1. Then his grandfather and dad got an offer to sell the business and took it, handing over the trucks and the Boychuk name emblazoned on the doors.

“I was 15 and really looking forward to be part of the family business when they sold it,” Boychuk recalls. “My father looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Go out and haul everything you can, everywhere you can. Learn as much about trucking as possible and maybe you and I will start up again one day.'”

For Tim Boychuk, the family’s legacy in Alberta’s trucking industry was too storied to abandon. You can trace it back to the early 1930s, when Tim’s grandfather John Boychuk bought a Ford Model-T pickup and hauled livestock around his hometown of Duvernay, Alta. By 1943, John was moving equipment for the U.S. Army on the newly built Alaska Highway, and in 1950 the builders of a new chlor-alkali plant in Duvernay asked him to haul materials for the plant’s construction. By the end of the decade, Boychuk Transport had moved to an office in Edmonton, grown to five delivery trucks and 10 tractors, and John’s son Nick was managing the day-to-day operations.

Over the next 20 years, the company carved a niche hauling liquid chemicals and expanded to 40 trucks and 15 lease operators. Its success attracted the attention of Rice Truck Lines, a carrier in Great Falls, Mont., which made an offer too good for John and Nick to refuse. Seemingly, it was the end of the line for the Boychuk name.

Tim had quit school after Grade 12 and spent most of the next 10 years hauling everything from explosives to livestock for a handful of carriers and owner-operators. He never forgot his father’s advice. In 1987, nine years to the day of the original fleet’s sale, Tim and Nick bought a used truck and a set of new double tankers to haul liquid chemicals and started hauling chemicals under the name N.R.B. Developments. In a strange twist of fate, Tim and his father were competing with the business that Nick dedicated most of his life to building and Tim spent his youth dreaming about running. Within a year, they had acquired the rights to the Boychuk name and opened Boychuk Transport (1988) Inc., adopting the same measured principals that allowed the original company to grow.

Margins are tight for most carriers — especially ones that, from the start, have to spring for new $150,000 double tankers. With so much start up capital tied up behind the fifth wheel, the Boychuks expanded with used tractors.

For Tim, that meant a lot of time in coveralls. “I spent the first years under the trucks fixing them. But you never had to worry about the trailers,” he explains. “Meanwhile, you’re charging a rate that would hypothetically cover payments for both trailers and (new trucks), and you justify the rate with great customer service. So all that extra equity, you just keep reinvesting into the company. The goal was to grow the trailer side as much as we could, and build enough equity to get to a point where we could replace the used trucks.”

In the meantime, Nick won a contract to haul for Celanese Chemicals, his biggest account 10 years prior.

“Here’s my dad taking back his most loyal customer from the company that was once his,” says Tim. The competitor threatened lawsuits for stealing knowledge and customers. “That’s kind of ironic, because it was my dad’s knowledge. He and my grandfather built that haul from the start.”

In 1992, with 14 used trucks and 30 trailers, the Boychuks ordered their first new trucks — two Kenworth T800s. It was a time to celebrate. But that year, Nick lost a battle to cancer at the age of 56. Mourning the death of his father and business partner, as well as dealing with nervous creditors, Tim contemplated packing it in.

Yet here he was, right where he’d always dreamed of being, at the helm of the family business. Instead of scaling back, Tim looked to expand. At the bank, he recalls, “There was this fear that, ‘Oh no the kid is going to come in and screw it all up.'” But the company was financially strong, and Tim found a lender willing to finance its growth. Tim made the bold move of purchasing six new B-train combinations to haul methanol, which is used to hydrate pipelines. At that time, the Alberta economy was unstable.

“The trailers sat awhile,” he says, “and all of a sudden business went nuts, and we didn’t have enough trailers. It was just one of those wild years. It turned out to be one of the best moves we could have made at the time.”

To date, Boychuk Transport operates more than 40 tractors and 100 combination trailers and has grown financially about 10 per cent a year since Tim took over. The company has made an acquisition of its own, buying part of Sherwood Park, Alta.-based Cimmaron Ventures to haul waste and recycled oil.

As for what lies ahead: “Five years from now I think we’ll be either double the size or be gone,” Boychuk says. “Trucking these days is eat or be eaten.”

He hopes that one day his own children will chart the family legacy in trucking. “I would love to see the business handed down to a fourth generation,” he says. “Of course, they have more opportunities to do bigger and better things… For me though, this is what I’ve always wanted to do. It’s all I’ve known.”