3 Driven by incentives.

• Author: Loranger, Allison
• Position: Top 5 Transportation Companies

Those in the trucking industry know that increases in fuel and insurance costs are unavoidable. To offset rising costs, John McKevitt Sr, president of McKevitt Trucking Ltd., has created incentives for his drivers and has been investing in fuel-efficient engines.

Since 1948 McKevitt Sr. has been working in the trucking business. For 13 years he hauled pulp, wood, sand and gravel. Then in 1961 he established McKevitt Trucking.

Including the head office in Thunder Bay, there are now four terminals located across Ontario; with one in Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie and Mississauga.

The company has 160 employees, including drivers, mechanics and office workers. McKevitt also has a fleet of 140 trucks with an average of 80 to 90 trucks on the road everyday.

"These trucks travel 52 per cent (of the time) in Ontario and 48 per cent in the United States," McKevitt says. The trucks usually provide general freight services for his customers, but also haul forest lumber and paper.

McKevitt has taken a unique approach to help offset the rising cost of fuel. He is offering drivers incentives to conserve fuel.

The better the fuel mileage the drivers get, the better the bonus, as the incentive is calculated by a cents-per-mile bonus, McKevitt says.

According to McKevitt, the company purchased the first computerized engine introduced to Canada in 1987 and has also invested in exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) engines.

EGR is a technique, which reduces nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide in most diesel and gasoline engines. In diesel engines, efficiency is improved by the reduction of...