A man of principal becomes a city's legacy
Rod Carry's vision takes Joyline Trucking success outside city limits
R By TIM KALINOWSKI
od Carry was bigger than life; a local Medicine Hat legend towering and strong wearing a big cowboy hat and driving a Cadillac down the highway. Rod’s name is forever transfixed in Medicine Hat history. All along busy Carry Drive, every place you see calls to mind the man and the name.
When Rod chose to get involved with something, he got involved to the max: Kiwanis, Shriners, Elks, the Oilmen's Association and a myriad other community organizations. Alongside his other
extraordinary community achievements, he was also a founding partner of the Medicine Hat Tigers and the Medicine Hat Blue Jays, and long-time president of the Medicine Hat Exhibition and Stampede. He passionately believed in helping his neighbour, in the power of the personal touch when dealing with people and in the primacy of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And do more even beyond that.
It was these values Rod passed onto his five sons: Wayne, Mark, Pat, Cameron and Shawn. It was these values which turned Joyline Transport, founded by Rod, into a local business success story. It was these values which allowed Joyline to evolve from a single tandem water truck operation in 1955 into a transport company which provided drilling rig moving, service rig moving, specialized and heavy hauling, fluid hauling and mobile pressure and vacuum services in its later years. By the time it was sold to Flint Energy in 2006, Joyline had a prairie-wide presence with more than 150 employees. As Shawn Carry explains, his dad expected far more out of him and his brothers than he did from others.
“I had to work my way up (at Joyline),” Shawn remembers. “My Dad started me in sweeping, and that’s where my brothers all started. And eventually you might work your way up to being in the wash bay. So he always brought you in from the ground up, and he taught us kids well. We had a very successful second generation business thanks to the leadership we had from him prior to taking over in 1990. It was never a free ride, and I would argue he was a heck of a lot harder on us than he ever was on his staff. I think he wanted the most out of us, and he wanted us to be examples — wanted us to be leaders. So you couldn’t walk in 10 minutes late. I only did it once,” jokes Shawn. “I never did it again.”
Another important lesson Rod taught his sons was the ability to lead even when times are tough, and not to swerve from your principles just because
18 | 2013 REPORT ON SOUTHEAST ALBERTA
you face adversity. Rod successfully navigated Joyline Transport through the desolation of the early 1980s in the local oil and gas industry without laying off a single salaried employee.
“I remember when we only had one job for an entire month in 1982, and it was really hard to keep your salaried staff,” explains Shawn. “And we did things like a rotational where people were working 60 per cent of their time, and we did whatever we had to to keep our core, key, staff employed, and keep everybody employed as much as we could. And it’s not indicative of today's times. Now, no one wastes any time laying guys off. In that respect the company was kind of an extension of our family. People loved to work there. Back then, Dad felt the responsibility. He felt responsible for those people that he hired. To ever lay them off was extremely hard for him.”
Rod was people-centred in his approach, and Joyline's success was always tied to the personal relationships Rod built up with those he dealt with. Shawn believes his dad would have difficulty with the oil and gas service industry of today.
“It is really a different world now, especially for the south and Medicine Hat. We had a pretty hard run with gas prices the way they are. And I think the environment has changed for the foreseeable future, and to go back to the way we were, where things were done with a handshake— well, now there is bidding processes and requests for tenders. Companies have gotten a lot better at their spending and they seem to work the supplier to their advantage. You could do 50 straight jobs for them without any issues, but then one goes sideways and they’ll throw you to the side. It’s big business now. And my father would really have a tough time trying to navigate in that kind of environment because he was such a relationship guy.”
For Shawn, who recently retired as a Senior VP for Flint Energy, the consequences of this continuous layoff and re-bidding process for service
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116