Firm Foundations
With a collective vision for northern development and ownership, a team of people came together to form NRT. These are the men who launched NRT and carried it forward to become a strong and successful company.

Chief Myles Venne (now a member of the Canadian Senate) of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band was, in the mid-1980's, directing Dave McIlmoyl, the Band's Executive Director, to seek out strong and secure business opportunities for his people.

"Myles is a remarkable person," says Dave McIlmoyl (now V.P. of NRTLP) "His dream was to take the Band, through economic development, to a situation where band members could obtain training and become self-sufficient. Through the force of his personality, he enabled this to happen."

With a clear mandate and broad parameters, Dave was able to develop a strong business arm for The Lac La Ronge Indian Band - Kitsaki Development Corporation (now Kitsaki Development Limited Partnership), which continues to grow and flourish. NRT was launched under the KDC banner, as a joint venture between the La Ronge Indian Band and Trimac Transportation, to serve the emerging gold and uranium mines of northern Saskatchewan.

In 1994, NRT broadened its ownership to include nine northern Indian bands and three Metis communities.

Dave McIlmoyl, Vice President of Northern Resource Trucking Limited Partnership has a long and influential history with NRT.

Instrumental in NRT's foundation in 1986, when he was Executive Director of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, Dave was the obvious choice, in 1998 for the newly created executive position of Vice-President of NRT, to keep the rapidly expanding company operating smoothly and efficiently.

"With his years of experience as Executive Director of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, General Manager of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band's business arm, KDC, and his close involvement in the creation of NRT, Dave brought to NRT a deep understanding of the north, alongside excellent management skills. He put together a strong team and he's doing a good job," says NRT President Rick Reynolds.

From inception, through planning and negotiation to launch, operation and growth of Northern Resource Trucking Limited Partnership, the man who today heads up the NRT management team has had his hand on the pulse of NRT for its entire life.

Dave and the Lac La Ronge Indian Band entered into the NRT partnership plan with a proven track record. In the mid-eighties, the mining industry was on the brink of developing the vast uranium and gold resources of Saskatchewan's north. The industry's construction phase provided the Lac La Ronge Indian Band with the opportunity for employment in road construction. Dave sought an equitable joint venture partnership with a construction company. The Band was in business.

In 1986, with the mining industry ready to begin mining, milling and transporting goods to and from the mines, this was the logical place to look for further business opportunities - in the transportation industry. Dave began his search for a major trucking company that would provide the expertise, equipment and training the Band needed, while meeting the Band's business arm on its terms to create an equitable joint venture.

Dave McIlmoyl compiled a shortlist. Meanwhile, Rick Reynolds (at that time Saskatchewan and Manitoba Region Manager of Trimac Transportation) had been viewing Kitsaki Development Corporation (the Band's business arm) as an attractive joint venture partner in the North. Dave had a meeting with Rick. The timing was perfect. Of the companies the Band talked with, Trimac Transportation proved to be the one that was up to the task.

Thorough negotiations and agreements began that would culminate in the establishment of a strong and solid partnership between Trimac Transportation and the Lac La Ronge Indian Band.

From the beginning, Dave sat on the NRT Board of Directors.

In 1994, Dave, then General Manager of KDC, was once again at the forefront of negotiations and agreements when NRT broadened its ownership base to include nine northern Indian Bands and three Metis communities.

Throughout the years, in many capacities, Dave McIlmoyl has been a strong and solid bridge between north and south.

In 1986, Northern Resource Trucking was launched with Rick Reynolds as President. Throughout 20 years of major growth and change, Rick has held the company on course - a steady and vigilant man at the helm.

In 2002, after 28 years in the industry, Rick retired from his position, as Senior Vice President of Trimac Transportation, in charge of Western North America, but remains President of NRT. This is a company close to his heart. "The creation of NRT was a significant part of my career," he says.

Like all successful ventures, NRT was a company created to fill a need. "We were trying to get an enterprise together that would include northern people. We took it one logical step at a time and it was a process that evolved," he says. "From the beginning, it was different - different from anything that I or Trimac had ever been associated with. But it was one of those right things that really worked. I'm proud of that and I will always be very proud of NRT."

And he should be. NRT is a north-south model that has been successful because everyone involved had the will to make it so. Pooling their resources, Trimac Transportation and First Nations and Metis communities throughout the north came together, with the support of the mining industry to create a new, separate and distinct enterprise. As a significant stakeholder, Trimac was able to contribute its vast knowledge and expertise in the trucking industry to the northern venture. It was a solid plan. Over the past 20 years, NRT has grown and flourished.

It was a company strength from the beginning that the skills of Roger Olyowsky, first General Manager of NRT, complemented those of President Rick Reynolds.

In 1986, Roger took the dream for a northern trucking company and, one day at a time, built a living, breathing operation. He came to the job with vast experience and a will to succeed and, throughout his 15 years as GM, honed an operation that is one of the finest in the industry.

"Roger knows the trucking business inside out. I never questioned Roger. And there's no doubt that he was dedicated to NRT. He was a hard worker," says Rick.

Rick and Roger were a good team. "Rick was an excellent man to work with," says Roger. "From the beginning, he wanted to make sure that NRT remained independent from Trimac and ran on its own steam. I had a lot of ideas about trucking operations. Rick could do the analysis very quickly and judge if an idea would meet our needs. He had a very good vision and stayed focussed. While he stayed focussed, I executed. Two different minds focussed on the same goal, always coming from different directions. We always had something unique to contribute."

Roger can truly be called the cornerstone of this company.

"For the first four month, May to August, I did everything, including dispatch, so I was talking to drivers on a regular basis" recalls Roger. "When we hired a traffic supervisor, I trained him. Back then, in the beginning, close relationships developed that came from working in tight corners, shoulder-to-shoulder. You earned trust or you lost it."

As the company has grown, the precedent set by Roger of an ever-open door to management remains.

In its first decade, NRT went through tremendous growth and a major learning curve. A company like no other, it blazed a trail in the north that has changed north-south business relations in a significant and profound way. NRT proved that a company could be built and prosper in a north-south partnership that combines the wisdom and knowledge of two cultures. Roger was the guide on that trail.

Roger retired his from his position as NRT General Manager in 2001, but his influence and the values and standards that he established form the enduring foundations of NRT.