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Keeping it Simple
by Steve Macleod
If you ask Keith McMurdo about the difference between an owner-operator who runs a few trucks and a fleet owner, he-ll tell you it-s a full-time mechanic. McMurdo never made the jump to fleet owner. At a peak of seven trucks - he now owns four — the Calgary-based owner-operator was always the main mechanic in his shop. And, like many others like him, he-s behind the wheel most days of the week and also in charge of the office paperwork - with the help of his wife, of course. It was back in 2001 when K-Mac Trucking numbered seven trucks, most running for Federated Co-op Ltd. (FCL). If there was a good time for McMurdo to push forward and grow into a fleet, that was it. "I sat back one day and looked at the numbers," says McMurdo. "And I realized Co-op was paying the bills. They even paid the licensing and registration, which makes it that much simpler." So, four of the trucks painted in the red and white colors of FCL stayed. Another FCL truck, as well as two other trucks being contracted out to other carriers and pulling everything from vans to flatdecks and dumps, were trimmed from the fleet. "You just have to react to the business. It-s all about customer need," explains McMurdo. "Keep it simple, rather than bigger because that-s when the problems show up." This was a time when McMurdo-s relationship with FCL spanned three decades, with one short break, but he was taking pills for his blood pressure. Downsizing was a simple choice. Live and Learn McMurdo and FCL have been through a couple of "firsts" together. The first time he drove a tractor-trailer was as a 19-year-old with FCL back in 1977 and two years later he became an owner-operator for the first time, leased to FCL. FCL-s roots date back to the 1920s, when a group of co-op retailers in western Canada worked together to expand their buying power. Today, approximately 270 independent retail co-operatives own FCL and their service network stretches from Thunder Bay, Ont. to the Queen Charlotte Islands in B.C. Many of the retail locations operate as a grocery store/department store combination, with a gas station and hardware store attached or nearby. McMurdo has put in 25 years of safe driving with the company and has the jacket to prove it. He estimates that-s nearly three million miles without an incident. His first attempt at running more than one truck, however, didn-t happen with FCL and it didn-t exactly go according to plan. Like many other born-and-raised Albertans, McMurdo felt the pull of the oilpatch and it was too hard to resist. In 1987 he spec-d a hotshot truck and headed out to make his fortune. Unfortunately, it didn-t work out that way. "Everybody kept saying if you take your truck to the oilpatch you-ll make so much money," remembers McMurdo, with a wry grin. "I ended up working one day out of 10, so the money was good if you could find solid work. It was one of those times when the oilpatch wasn-t doing so good." With a lack of money coming in, and a truck spec-d specifically for the oilpatch, McMurdo had to purchase another truck - two actually - to generate income on the highway. On his extended periods away from the oilpatch, McMurdo used his other two trucks primarily to deliver Quonsets (portable zipper-locked steel buildings for farms) across the prairies. In the end, though, the extra work just wasn-t enough. McMurdo was working too many hours with not enough return, so he packed it in and headed back to FCL in 1990 - as an owner-op with just one brand new truck. Within a few years, FCL decided to consolidate its hardware warehouses to Calgary and asked McMurdo to take on a second truck to handle more runs. He obliged and then ended up adding a third truck in 1994, followed by a fourth in 1995. The big difference for McMurdo in running multiple trucks this time around is they were taken on to handle increased demand for his services, rather than to chase after new work. "I was pretty confident they [FCL] would keep us busy," adds McMurdo. "It-s not recession-proof, but it-s certainly better than some other industries - like the oilpatch we talked about." Hiring Challenges Ever since McMurdo became an owner-operator in the late 1970s, he-s rented shop space in southeast Calgary. Today, K-Mac Trucking makes its home in an 1800-sq-ft shop in the same warehouse district where it all started, not far off the Deerfoot Trail. "I kept thinking if I got big enough I could hire a full-time mechanic," says McMurdo. "But then you start to get bigger and you start getting some drivers who you might not work well with. One of the toughest things is hiring." Although he was never able to hire that mechanic, right now, McMurdo has pretty much the next best thing. "It-s nice to have a driver with a mechanical background. I have one driver now actually who used to work in a trailer repair shop," notes McMurdo. "So we have one guy who knows what he-s doing - him - and one guy who sort of knows what he-s doing - me." Although they do as much maintenance as they can at the shop, for major work the trucks get taken into a dealership. But McMurdo has come to terms with the fact he-ll never have a full-time mechanic and one day, won-t even have to worry about the hiring process at all. He doesn-t intend to add more trucks in the future and actually, keeps meaning to whittle the enterprise back down to one truck. "I keep meaning to downsize to one truck, but if they came to me and said we want you to do this route, I-d probably add another truck," he says. Whatever the customer needs.
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