by Mark Cardwell
André Morneau says his family’s trucking company was missing one terminal in a key geographic location to create the biggest and most extensive truck transportation terminal network in Quebec. But that changed with the official opening of the company’s 20th such facility in Sept-Îles in early June.
“This is the last link in the chain of 21 terminals,” Morneau, the company’s President, said about the new $1.5 million facility. “It completes our series of terminals (across the province).” Located on a 120,000-square-foot lot in the industrial park of Sept-Îles, a regional hub on Quebec’s rugged North Shore, 800 kms northeast of Quebec City, the 7,600-square-foot warehouse features ten state-of-the-art unloading docks with pneumatic levelers for greater operational efficiency. It also houses administrative offices, and has a storage area for the transshipment of goods. The new terminal has been in operation since March, when it replaced a temporary facility that was opened in Sept-Îles in July, 2012.
According to Morneau, the raison d’être of the new terminal is to both facilitate access and provide a wider array of transportation services to businesses enterprises and communities on the North Shore and further north with rapid access to local pick-up and delivery services, refrigerated transport services, bulking of shipments by rail, and flatbed semitrailer transport services. Those services have been provided over the past decade by the terminal the company built further east in Baie-Comeau in 2002. “We’ve been developing (the Sept-Îles project) for many years,” said Morneau, who owns Groupe Morneau with his younger sister, Micheline.
Their grandfather founded the company in 1942, and they and their father helped to build it into a transport giant that today boasts five carrier divisions and some 1,300 employees in Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritime provinces. The division that built and will operate the Sept-Îles terminal – Transport Morneau – specializes in less than truckload (LTT) and truck load (TL) transportation services. Other Divisions include Eskimo Express, Groupe Réflexion, Solution Morneau and Transport Sego
Transport Morneau has more than 1,000 truck and trailer units available for its customers, and offers online transaction services for requests for rates and shipment management. “Having a terminal in Sept-Îles, together with the Baie-Comeau terminal, positions us perfectly to serve the North Shore and our clients in region like Arcelor Mittal,” said Morneau. He added that the new facility is also now an important transportation hub for deliveries destined further north to communities like Fermont, Labrador City, and Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
Separately, the company recently announced the appointment of Mr. François-Nicolas Carrier as Director of Human Resources. Mr. Carrier graduated from Laval University in industrial relations and started his career as a human resources consultant in 1999 with a company now owned by Groupe Morneau, Eskimo Express Inc. Pursuing further professional challenges led Mr. Carrier to senior HR positions with Québec Cartier Mining (now part of ArcelorMittal) and Iron Ore Company of Canada.