I recall sitting at the cluttered desk staring blankly at the monitor. The cubicle I had just inherited was where I was to begin my new job out of college as an accounting clerk. I remember seeing paper everywhere. Envelopes filled with run sheets and crumpled documents were packed into boxes with large numbers written on the front.
The state of the office was generally filthy and it seemed like my office was the final resting place of an endless trail of documents that had traveled from places I could only imagine.
The entire front office was small in comparison to the size of the overall building with my desk separating the main room and facing another similarly disheveled desk waiting for a coworker I had yet to meet.
There was a door at the back of the office which seemed to act as a gateway to the heart of this operation. Every time this door opened I would feel a gust of cold air accompanied by the sound of forklift horns and hydraulics working away.
I could tell from the yelling and commotion I would sometimes hear behind that door that whatever was going on was definitely accompanied by a sense of urgency. To be honest, I was a little intimidated to venture out into the warehouse based on what I heard on the other side of that steel door.
To say the least, my first full-time job out of college wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned for my career. That day was my first, 20 years ago, in an industry that has offered me Highs and Lows, opportunities and setbacks, accolades, a solid living, and most of all - a profession in which I can say I never stop learning.
The company I had just joined was a small Mississauga, Ontario based trucking operation that had developed a special niche in intermodal drayage. Our trucks, at that time, numbered about 40 and would primarily go into and out of the of CN and CP railway terminals and pickup shipping containers that had arrived from overseas.
The trains would bring the containers in from the ports of Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver and our trucks would tow in chassis that the railway cranes would place the containers. Once properly secured, we would deliver them to companies all over Ontario.
Eventually, I found myself regularly visiting the dispatch office in the back warehouse and I would assist the workers there with everything from administrative tasks to helping on the shipping docks. Often there were ocean containers that would come back to our facility, and I would open or “destuff” them for our customers before we returned the empty containers to the railyard. It always amazed me to think that the contents had last been touched by someone in a far off land like China or India and had travelled so far to get to us.
This was the freight business. I had no clue as to the scale of the industry until one of the new hires, another accounting clerk named Leanne, expressed to me that we were just a small part of an industry that was one of the largest employers in North America.
As I explored this new world of transportation & logistics I eventually came to appreciate that I was part of something big. A business with unlimited opportunities and potential.