Encore Trucking & Transport Ltd. is an Edmonton-based company with over 40 years of experience serving Western Canada. They offer a wide range of services including crane operation, picker trucks and heavy transport. Their certified operators bring extensive lifting, hauling and rigging expertise, specializing in challenging hoist work. The company boasts a fleet of over 65 units, which includes 40 boom trucks ranging from 6 to 70 tons, along with specialized equipment such as huge knuckle booms, small deck trucks, tractors, long straight booms jack & roll crews and a mini crane rental fleet. Additionally, they have a substantial inventory of open deck trailers to accommodate the transportation of various commodities, from pre-cast concrete and building materials to artwork and electrical equipment.
Don Lucas is the owner and director of Encore Trucking & Transport.
“My father, Frank, was an old tool push,” he smiles as he remembers how it all began. “Frank helped his younger brother Sam buy a one ton truck in 1981. At that time dad was a drilling superintendent working mostly overseas and he knew there was a need for small hot shot units in the oil patch. I was a recently married college kid with a couple of degrees and no job. Dad was probably trying to help me get on my feet because he encouraged Sam to offer me a job.”
Lucas’ journey to what would become today’s Encore Trucking & Transport began with him driving out to Grande Prairie on a job.
“I thought I was going to the end of the world!” he laughs, “But the funny thing was, I kind of liked it and that buzz never went away. I’ve been really lucky in that I’ve been able to do something I like for 40+ years.”
Encore changed, grew and developed several times over. During that time Lucas’ wife, Lois, joined the company and now runs its administrations.
“My brother joined us and his technical savvy helped us grow the fleet. Both he and Sam have moved on, but new team members have joined us and our list of equipment has continued to expand; multiple carry decks, a small fleet of fork lifts, gantry cranes and winch tractors.”
But it wasn’t easy.
“Just switching out of the one tons, adding trailers, then the progression to five ton units was a battle,” says Lucas. “We didn’t have much cash and we couldn’t get credit without having cash. It took time to clear debt, only to borrow more and make a huge leap into the pickers. That was the key! Once we realized what the pickers were capable of, we got bigger, better ones. Our cash flow grew and we split the fleet into knuckles and straight booms.”
Being tied to the oilfield, however, was a double-edged sword for the growing company.
“We had a problem that is only apparent when things turn down. The oil patch, when it’s good, is the best but the downtimes were painful. We could sit for days waiting for the market to improve and for drilling to start again. There was an obvious alternative. We realized there was a huge market in the city – urban work, just laying there, waiting for someone to tap it.
So, Encore tapped in.
“We went in hard,” says Lucas. “AC and heating, roofers, siders, framers, millwrights, sign guys, streetlights, power poles, plumbers, boilers, steel crews, electricians – we knocked on every door we could find. It wasn’t easy and when we did find work, we needed longer and stronger cranes.”
By that time Encore knew how to turn challenges into opportunities. When they needed new cranes, they bought them and continued to tap into bigger markets.
“Now, years later, it’s hard to describe Encore,” says Lucas. “We are a trucking outfit with special skills and equipment and also a crane and lifting company that has unique lift and rigging skills. That sounds quite ordinary but our transport division has custom-built trailers to load easier and haul more. Thanks to pushed forward axles, we can turn sharper than other vehicles, which makes our lives easier and our work more efficient.”
He continues, “Our lifting skills are so diverse, we had to split the fleet into long straight booms and knuckle booms. They are very different beasts and extremely useful, if specked right. We can lift 200 feet up and reach 150 feet or poke through doors into rafters and inside buildings. We have custom-built flexible jibs for ultra low profile work. The city and the working world are a labyrinth of problems and tiny work sites – we need to be ready for all of it!”
Encore also has heavy haul crews to skate loads into place and tough brutish power units set up to push massive vessels and modules into plants.
“We were asked by a larger peer company to develop these units and learn the skill,” Lucas adds. “That kind of trust is something Encore has worked for years to acquire. Our steady work with utilities and long-term companies has allowed us to expand our maintenance shop, hire top notch mechanics and help the cause greatly by building a mechanic truck to service and repair our units in the field, on site.”
He chuckles, “We also have a fleet of mini cranes from 2.9 to 5 tons. These are magic creatures that can reach 70 feet yet can access your bathroom. We’ve got carry decks, right down to a 4 ton midget that some of our operators have to keep their arm out the window to fit. Not to mention forklifts up to 50,000 lbs and a tiny electrical, Mariotti Munchkin that will wheel into your house!
“Somehow we have 7 winch tractors, 3 tilt decks, trombone trailers, scissornecks, a 10 axle and a number of 5 ton singles with nice little 7.5 ton cranes on them. Small enough for our apprentices to run, but large enough to handle decent work.
“As we got larger and busier, we had to become a more cohesive team. We needed HR to find people and also monitor all the orientations and safety protocols that stacked like pancakes at Denny’s on almost every job. We needed safety to run our programs and keep the team protocols current for each employee, while maintaining individual clients with their own special site requirements. Dispatch has to organize our days, book our work with the appropriate cranes and operators and further ensure the orientations and safety requirements are acted on by our operators or admin staff. These admin staff need to be aware of the job requirements and send any documentation required to site. This can be insurance, WCB clearances, operator credentials… and on and on it goes.
“It takes a team to do this job in the modern industrial world and that is what Encore has evolved into, a well-oiled team of skillful dedicated, working professionals.”
Diversifying the fleet, services and staff has more than paid off, proving that Lucas and his team learned the early lessons of Alberta’s energy boom and bust cycles.
“All this has allowed us to fight the allure of Fort McMurray. We want our hands to become drivers, crane operators – thinking, involved employees. So, we open a door for them and see if they walk through it.”
As he reflects on the growth of the company, Lucas can scarcely believe how far they have come.
“We have faced many challenges; economic, pandemic, fires, deaths, equipment failures, bitter cold and years of stress negotiating the feast and famine of the Alberta work scene. But our largest challenge is, and forever will be, the constant search for steady work. Signing a multi-year contract with an electrical utility was perhaps our greatest moment. That was almost 11 years ago but the reality behind that statement is the 30 years of work, 20 of them in a small way with that utility before we were even allowed to quote on their contract. Think about that for a moment and understand how hard it can be to succeed in this world. Three years later we snagged another large utility. Unheard of! No one ever got both electrical grids!”
Encore does not just physically build communities. They also support them. Causes Encore invests in include Hope Mission, anti-human trafficking initiatives, Cross Cancer Institute and the Robin Hood Association.
Lucas adds, “However, the majority of our community work is with the women’s shelter A Safe Place in Sherwood Park. We move desks, donate clothes and toys, shovel snow and help fund small projects. Mainly we offer a steady cash flow for families and women in dangerous situations. They have fled their home only to find the shelters are full. These people are desperate. They have nowhere to turn except the street, or worse – return to the place they just fled. We can’t have that, so we pay for any hotel rooms they need. It’s the right thing to do.”
For the future, Encore will continue to innovate and progress, develop new skills, find more work and hire more people.
“My family will continue this journey but then it will become their vision, not mine. Jeff and our GM Doug McCaskill are a very capable experienced pair and our eldest, Tyler, is a very skilled operator. Our people will be fine. I have every confidence in them. I’m not retired but I keep getting these awards and feel like it is mostly, ‘Oh, you’re not dead yet?’ Yeah sorry. Still trucking! And there are grandsons that seem eager to get behind the wheel but at present are still wobbly little walkers.”
He has a great vision of the future of his industry and what it can mean for Alberta.
“I’d like to see the day we can run some of our cranes remotely from the office in a virtual space and be able to send loads to major centers like Calgary and Fort McMurray with semi-independent trucks. I want the province to get to carbon zero but with a world class oil and gas industry and pipelines to each coast.
“I think the future of moving and lifting will change dramatically; that there will come a day when science learns how to control nano-sized creature robots, moving like a shimmering fog across the ground under anything you want to move, then electronically stimulated change from a flowing stream of tiny plasma into more and more rigid structures that form to the work and with sheer numbers lift, elevate and flow again, down the street, across the room, up the stairs.”
The best way to sum up the history, values, mission, teamwork and future of Encore is seen in a sculpture they erected near its Yellowhead yard.
“It’s from Stonewriter and Roger and Matt Shore are the geniuses behind it. It was an idea I told Roger about after fighting through COVID. It’s a group – a family struggling against the elements on a journey into a dark unknown. The wind is blowing. The lead figure holds a lantern, clutching his hat, his lady following. The wind sweeps her coat as they stride into that force. She leads a massive horse, the children clinging to its back. They are quietly determined, each working on their own, but they are a group and together they feel unstoppable. I hope it reflects this, the greater journey of our lives.”
Like Encore, the sculpture is larger than life. It towers 30 feet in the air and the horse alone is 13 feet high. The weight is 20,000 pounds. Special equipment was required to move and install the piece. It sits as a testament to everything that Encore is, was and will be – a quietly determined team that moves forward, no matter what is on the path ahead.
“When I started there was myself and uncle Sam. We rented a bay and there was a little office up front. Today we have about 70 employees including both my wife and sons. We have four work yards, the largest ringed with trailers and another circled by boom trucks and tractors,” Lucas concludes.
“Is this the stuff of dreams? Yes, but remember, ‘fact follows fiction’. So, dream on.
