Trucking pioneer passes away

TORONTO, (Sept. 12, 2003) — W.J.(Bill) Mowat, founder of Mowat Transport/Mowat Express, passed away on Wednesday after a brief battle with liver disease. He would have turned 79 next month.

A true pioneer in the Canadian trucking industry, Mowat got his start in the transportation racket by delivering pharmaceuticals in his station wagon part-time to local pharmacies in the Toronto area. In 1953 he quit a full-time job at the railway and started Mowat Transport, still delivering mainly pharmaceuticals across Southern Ontario.

By the time Mowat retired and passed the company to his son in 1993, Mowat Transport had expanded to 500 units, 600 employees, and operated throughout 34 terminals in Ontario and Quebec. It still delivered pharmaceuticals, but now to retail giants like Shoppers Drug Mart. Mowat also found a niche delivering general goods to popular stores in shopping malls.

Son Alex Mowat remembers how working for dad was no easy ride. “I remember when there’d be a promotion or something available, he’d come up to me and say. ‘You and Bob Smith are equal … So I’m giving the job to Bob Smith.’

“My dad achieved all this with a grade 9 education,” Alex says. “He was very self-made, very entrepreneurial, but he knew what the people wanted. Sometimes you don’t learn those kind of values in school … I remember when ‘quality service’ became the big buzzword in the industry, some of us went to take some business classes. My dad shook his head. He’d say ‘why spent thousands of dollars to learn something I’ve been teaching you since you were five.”

Funeral services are Sunday Sept. 14, from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m., and from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m., at the Turner & Porter Funeral Home at 4933 Dundas St W. in Etobicoke, Ont. He will be buried at the same location on Monday.