Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/675322
May 2016 | Overdrive | 29 shippers, and he was asked how we balance safety and customer requirements," he says. "He said, 'It's very easy – the driver wins every day.' The driver's the one that's going to make that decision." To make that work, the company bases schedules on a 500-mile daily maximum. "That allows for those unfore- seen circumstances to occur and you still can achieve some very high on-time numbers," Pitzel says. For Bison, that's been an average on-time deliv- ery rate of about 98.5 percent. Bison's open door policy also works, Tricco says. "It doesn't matter how trivial the situation is. You can go in and talk to pretty much anyone there." Even though the com- pany has grown tremendously since Tricco joined, "They have a family quality," adds his wife, Melody. Like many owner-opera- tors, Tricco at fi rst didn't like electronic logs, which Bison uses. "But now I love them," he says. "Because now there's no forced dispatch allowed. Our company never did it anyway. The computer tells us how far we can make it." Tricco's 36-year driving ca- reer grew from his working in warehouses, followed by a job as a driver salesman, deliver- ing snack food in Montreal. As a volunteer fi reman, he also gained related experience as a driver and pump operator. Then he went through varied driving jobs: logging trucks, tankers, tractor-trail- er dumps, hauling heavy equipment and lumber, and pulling reefers to deliver to restaurants and hotels. Next was what became a 20-year career with Bison. He became an owner-operator in 1998, buying a new 1997 Volvo. That was followed by an International and a Volvo, which he sold recently when someone made him a good off er. He's driving a rented truck at the moment, but hopes to soon order a new truck. He has his eye on a 2016 Freightliner Cascadia. Tricco pulls Bison's trailers ("a lot less headaches" than owning one), mostly reefers in recent years. About 80 percent of his loads go to the United States, often chicken and pork to warehouses in the Midwest. Legally, "Anything I pick up has to go back to Canada," he says. "Normally, I try to stay out 14 days and come home for three." Melody used to ride with him, "just taking care of the driver," she says. "I loved going out with him, and even riding with him I learned a lot. He's also teaching our children how to drive properly – the rules of the road. One thing he taught me was to turn off the cruise. In bad weather, never use that. And cover the brake – always expect that." While Tricco contributed to Melody's learning about HIS SIXTH SENSE WAS RIGHT One thing that makes Mark Tricco stand out "is that he's not just worried about himself, he's worried about everybody that works at Bison," says Garth Pitzel, safety director for Bison Transport. "If somebody needs a hand, Mark's the fi rst to help, whether it's at the terminal or on the road. He's got that small-town mentality, where if somebody needs help, you just help him." That concern once saved another trucker's life. On the job in January 1998 in the middle of the night, Tricco saw a tractor-trailer on the shoulder of a road in northern Ontario. "It was between 25 and 35 below," he recalls. He had a "gut feeling" that something was wrong. Tricco pulled over and knocked on the door. There was no re- sponse, and the engine was off. No cones or fl ares were placed, so Tricco put his own out to better secure the scene. Ready to leave, he knocked one last time. The driver fi nally came to the door. "I think he'd started to fall asleep in the bunk trying to stay warm, so he was a little bit incoherent," Tricco says. "The driver had no heat, light or batteries." "The sad thing was the man had on blue denim jeans, a T-shirt and a blue denim coat – basically summer clothing in the middle of winter," he says. Tricco got him to a hospital and later learned that he had been without heat for four and a half hours. He had frostbite on 40 percent of his body, but lost no limbs. Tricco said he always carries an emergency kit, as do most truckers and other drivers in Canada. In a video interview, Mark Tricco recounts his encounter with the stranded driver. The video was played before the Truckload Carriers Asso- ciation awards banquet in Las Vegas, where he received his honor, which included a $25,000 prize made possible by contest sponsors Cummins and Love's Travel Stops. You can view the video at OverdriveMag on youtube.com. Joined by his wife of 35 years, Melody, Mark Tricco was named 2014 National Driver of the Year by the Canadian Trucking Alliance and Volvo Trucks Canada. The Triccos have three sons and two grandchildren.