Company History

On June 26 2000, Payne Transportation Inc. (P.T.I.) officially opened its doors for business.  The Payne Family of Winnipeg, Manitoba partnered with Alberta based Mullen Transportation Inc to create one of the most modern trucking companies in Canada.

The first power unit was licensed for July 1, 2000 and was dispatched on its first load July 3, 2000 with a load of Ford New Holland tractors.  Today, we have over 160 trucks, and approximately 250 trailers in the fleet and 5 modern facilities.

Tom Payne Sr., President and CEO of Payne Transportation Inc., has over 40 years of experience in the transportation industry, including 30 years with Tri-Line Expressways Ltd.  Tom represented Tri-Line as President and COO for the last nine years of service until his resignation in April of 2000 for personal reasons.

Together the Payne family and their staff have formed a nucleus to operate a very successful over the road transportation company.  Today, his son, Tom Payne Jr. is now President while his daughter, Robin Veldkamp is the Director of Administration.

In October 2004, PTI purchased Kooistra Trucking Ltd from Gardewine North.  This 22 truck fleet and their vans brought us to over 200 power units for the first time.

In the spring of 2005, we broke ground on our new building. This new facility situated on 16 acres of land allows us to grow our fleet significantly. We are also now able to perform more warehousing and cross docking functions then we could do at our old building. Our building is 15,000 square feet and allows us to more comfortably handle any head office administrative functions. In having our own shop and wash bay, we no longer need to hire outside contractors to perform servicing on company owned equipment.

In June 2005, Mullen Transportation was converted from a publicly traded company into an income trust.  This resulted in Mullen Transportation purchasing the remaining 55% of PTI they didn’t already own and converted PTI into Payne Transportation LP.  Payne continued to operate as a separate division of the much larger Mullen Group Income Fund.

In March 2006, Payne purchased another small company, this being the 23 truck fleet of C. Steen Trucking based in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta.  This company offered expedited LTL service between Alberta and Texas twice a week.  This also brought us a new terminal in Houston, TX.  We would move our Edmonton office into C. Steen’s Fort Saskatchewan building in the summer of 2006.

In July 2010, Payne purchased 2 heavy haul companies – GVT of Winkler, MB and Ger-Ed Transport of Winnipeg. These two companies each brought about 35 trucks into our company and opened up a new branch of service that we did not previously provide – that being heavy haul and over dimensional transportation. These two companies and their experienced operators can handle freight shipments over 60,000 lbs utilizing tri axle RGN or Stepdeck trailers. Over time, they were rolled into one under our SCD Specialized division banner and are dispatched out of our Winkler terminal.

In 2017, the Mullen Group purchased Kel-West Carriers of Kelowna, BC and put them under the management of (now) Payne Transportation Ltd. These 20 truck deck fleet added a new geographic area of coverage that Payne did not service very well beforehand. In 2018, Kel-West was rolled into Payne as our Kel-West Division as part of our Deck Division and no longer operates as a separate entity. We believe this synergy will now offer our customers and owner/operators better coverage and service then we could provide before.

Revised:  January 2019