A 98-pound mother unable to lift a 100-pound milk can onto a railroad station platform inspired the birth of one of Canada’s largest trucking companies.
Jack McCaig’s mother was late hauling their milk to Moose Jaw and none off the neighbours who usually helped her were still there.
Unable to lift the can and unable to get any help from the railroad workers, she poured the milk out.
When McCaig heard the story that night over supper he was incensed.
“I decided that’s it,” McCaig recalled in an interview years after the 1930 incident. “I started a run with the truck, picking up milk all the way to Regina. The farmers were delighted.”
His business took off. He financed his new $500 Ford with $50 earned that winter hauling coal by wagon and horse.
When he was 16 or 17, he had admired the possibilities of trucking that could save three days of time waiting for machine parts to arrive by train.
McCaig sold the milk freight business in 1932 to set up McCaig Cartage in Moose Jaw with two used hand trucks and a home-built trailer.
In the depths of the Great Depression he prospered, winning job after job. One of his innovations was to seek back haul freight from trips to cut costs.
He interrupted the business for three years in 1941 to serve with the Canadian military as an instructor in mountain driving.
In 1945 he took a partner, Al Cameron, and formed Maccam Transport with a second enterprise, Maccam Motors. Maccam Motors, a Ford-Mercury dealership, was located on the current Pizza Hut site.
The company became Trimac Transport in 1960 with the name reflecting two sons Bud and Norm working in the business.
The company grew organically and by acquisition. Today, the 75-year-old Trimac operates more than 2,500 tractors and more than 4,000 trailers in Canada and the United States, hauling bulk commodities.
By 1954, all the McCaig sons were involved. A new Redi-Mix concrete business opened in Moose Jaw on River Street, still operating under different owners.
In 1961 the company bought H.M Trimble and Sons, moving headquarters to Calgary.
Over the years Trimac has acquired almost three dozen companies, with purchase of the Gibson Energy trucking business in Moose Jaw being one of the latest.
The family has never forgotten its Moose Jaw roots with numerous donations ranging from a tourist centre building to McCaig Gardens in Wakamow to funds for the new hospital among the donations.
Family plans for a Moose Jaw celebration this summer were postponed by COVID-19 as were plans for a mobile history display unit that would have come to Moose Jaw.
Trimac became a public company with shares trading in 1971 and in 2000 became a family-owned company once again.
Ron Walter can be reached at [email protected]
