A southeastern Ontario based transportation and logistics company is celebrating 75 years in business. The Cooney Group of Companies hauls numerous products and manages logistics Canada wide, under different operating divisions. President Adam Cooney says a lot has changed in the ground transportation sector since his grandfather founded the business in 1945.
In the company’s earliest days the business was very regional.
Over decades of corporate expansion, Cooney Group has maintained it’s eastern Ontario roots, headquartered in Belleville. Adam Cooney says the company’s historic geographical location is an extension of family ties, not because of where the business comes from.
Adam Cooney has been in the family business full-time all of his adult life. For the last several years he has led the company and it’s employees. He talks about some of the challenges facing a modern transportation company.
Covid-19 has had an impact on every industry in Canada, the transportation sector included. Cooney says there was a great deal of uncertainty at the beginning of the viral outbreak but in the end, there was a job to do.
Many businesses closed outright at the height of the pandemic, but the Cooney Group of Companies felt less of an impact. The importance of keeping supply lines open during a public health care crisis played into the company’s main business and area of expertise. Some office staff were laid off temporarily but a number of those workers have already been recalled. By the end of June it’s expected the remaining staff will be back to work.
After 75 years on the road, Adam Cooney says the company is celebrating three quarters of a century in business by recognizing its accomplishments and the people who got Cooney to where it is today.
For a number of weeks now, a specially wrapped 75th anniversary tractor- trailer rig has been rolling along the highway, a billboard on wheels to share the company’s history and a family’s legacy.
Cooney says while the imagery of the anniversary features his grandfather Chuck, it needs to be said that the Cooney Group of Companies would not exist as it does today without the work of his father. Gary Cooney took over the business in 1986. Adam says for decades, his father put in endless hours of hard work as Chief Executive Officer. Adam notes there were multiple recessions and tough times during his father’s leadership but throughout, a company first mindset has kept the wheels rolling and the people working.
Cooney says it’s hoped his family owned and operated business can hold a formal public celebration of its anniversary, postponed because of Covid-19, perhaps in the late summer or fall.
