An Association is Formed

Since the turn of the century Ontario Trucking Association member trucks have been an everyday sight on Ontario roads. Before that OTA members hauled with horses and wagons.

It was in 1926 that industry visionaries identified the need for a unified voice of the trucking industry and formed an association that is known today as the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA). The OTA has shaped truck transportation in Ontario.

The OTA got its start when industry visionaries met at the offices of the Toronto Storage and Transport Company owned by George E. Parke, one of the founders. It was at this meeting where the idea to form an association of truckers was solidified. Less than a month later the group was incorporated and named the Automotive Transport Association, (later the Ontario Trucking Association). The truckers named Frederik C. Foy as president and Don MacQuarrie as secretary-treasurer.

Fred Foy, the well educated off-spring of a politically prominent Toronto family ran the Ontario Transport Company. Don MacQuarrie was a chartered accountant with many clients in the trucking business. While neither man ever drove a truck, both had a strong interest in the industry and its people.

Today the association is one of the country’s leading trade associations that is nationally and internationally recognized.

OTA celebrated it's 75th anniversary in 2001. To commemorate this milestone, OTA commissioned a poster depicting some of the important people and events that helped shape our industry (see below).

Actual size: 20" high x 28" wide

If you would like to request a free copy of this poster, please email our communications department at info@ontruck.org

How Trucking Got its Start in Ontario

The first truck to operate in Ontario appeared in 1898. That is when retailer Bob Simpson imported an electric-powered truck. His store, the Robert Simpson Co. Ltd. of Toronto, had been famous for years for the smart delivery wagons it used, drawn by matched gray horses. The battery truck was a departure, yet in keeping with Simpson’s leadership in delivery systems. The Simpson’s truck was built by Fischer Equipment Company of Chicago. The vehicle had a top speed pf 14 miles an hour – although the speed limit on Toronto city streets at that time was 10 miles per hour.

Less than a year after the Simpson purchase, Parker Dye Works bought an electric delivery wagon. It was built in Canada in a factory on Yonge Street. The vehicle was used for pleasure and business by company owner R. Parker and his driver.

Travel in bad weather was difficult for cars and commercial vehicles because the roads were so poor. A few roads were paved in the cities and most were passable, except during winter storms. But in the years after the turn of the century, few commercial vehicles ventured beyond the city limits.

By 1903 there were 178 horseless carriages in Ontario, mostly passenger cars. As cars and commercial vehicles increased in number, roads gradually improved; wherever the roads went so went telephone and hydro lines, which required trucks to install and service them.

As cars and trucks increased in number, roads gradually improved; wherever the roads went so went telephone and hydro lines, installed and serviced by truck.

Communities that had been isolated and lighted by lamp were able to speak to the world by telephone, to light barns and houses electrically and even start industries, though relatively remote from rail lines. Trucks could carry goods rapidly from producer to consumer.

The truck was as vital to the twentieth century as the waterways had once been to opening up the country, and as the railways had been to the nineteenth century.

The First World War revolutionized trucking in Ontario as it did elsewhere. Motor transport was one of the greatest developments of the war, which started with hoofed horsepower and ended with horsepower on wheels. During the war, many men learned to drive and to love the creatures of the automobile factories. When they returned home they sought out cars and trucks to drive.

But it was the railway strike of 1950 that proved the catalyst to the creation of today’s modern trucking industry. In August 1950 Canadians – who still relied heavily on rail shipments - faced a major catastrophe when the nation’s first mass strike of the railway unions occurred. There was grave concern that big cities could not be fed and businesses would shutdown from coast-to-coast while the railways sat idle.

The leaders of the Ontario Trucking Association at the time vowed to enlist the aid of every truck operator in the country to keep the country’s freight – and food – moving. Their efforts were so successful that the trucking association coordinated the movement of tens of thousands of “emergency” freight shipments.

By the end of the railway strike, the hearts and minds of the community, including the shipping community, had been soundly won.

Newspaper headlines had nothing but praise: “The trucking associations have rendered excellent service in the crises and have done much to prevent a greater breakdown in the country’s operation. For this their good work will be remembered in their favour…” (Telegram).

The Toronto Star wrote: “An outstanding feature of the railway strike was the fine service provided by the rubber-tired transportation in the effort to ameliorate the hardships which the strike involved.”

The trucking industry had earned a new level of respect and trucking was from then on valued as the most reliable form of transportation. Many shippers refused to ship their goods by rail ever again. The trucking industry earned a landslide of new customers – a new era for trucking began.

In 1998, Canada celebrated 100 years of trucking. To commemorate this milestone, OTA published a timeline called Trucking in Canada: 100 Years.

Trucking in Canada: 100 Years

For more information about the Ontario Trucking Association and the development of the trucking industry in Ontario and Canada, please refer to OTA’s 1976 publication The Golden Years of Trucking (available soon for download).