You wouldn’t exactly know it just passing by, but there’s a connection between the car-hauler under the phantasmagorical northern lights and the lowest level of the Cremona Hotel in Cremona, Alberta.
Down in the basement most days you’ll find one Darryl Cummings working dispatch operations for 12-truck Car Couriers, moving vehicles used and new cross-border and within Canada.
With Cummings you’ll find CEO and General Manager Gerry Neilon, another dispatcher, and a company accounting rep hard at work in what once was a suite Neilon lived in himself 35 years ago around the time his children were born, he said.
“My family’s had the hotel for 48 years,” since purchase in 1978, he added, predating Car Couriers by nearly two decades.
Gerry and his father trucked before that, though, leased to another outfit hauling finished lumber with Super B road trains back into Alberta from British Columbia, pig feed from Alberta headed the other way.
A golf cart business father and son ran at the time, too, owned a tractor and trailer for that purpose. That operation got he and his father into moving vehicles, ultimately, for an auto transport-dedicated carrier. There they found rates well better than trucking commodities until the carrier stiffed them for some work.
“We were on our own as of 1997,” Neilon said, with a flatbed Hino toting a 53-foot deck trailer behind it.
“We could put one on the deck,” he said, “then up to three pickup trucks on the trailer. … We weren’t super-legal in British Columbia,” but freight into northern Montana, dealer transfers within Alberta and other areas helped them ease into the car-haul business on their own.
Fast-forward to today, and Car Couriers’ 12 mostly stinger-steer units run a mix of new and used vehicles within Canada and cross-border from the port in Aberdeen, Washington, to points north. Neilon and team keep their heads on a swivel for other loads too, rolling with market punches with dexterity.
[Related: She makes car-haul look easy: Trucker of the Month Crystal Rives]
Post-COVID, for instance, when “things were slow,” Neilon and company saw opportunity in the many “Canadian snowbirds” escaping long winters in lockdown to the United States. They “needed to ship their vehicles. We acted on that and moved around 40 loads to California and Arizona.”
Long-term it’s been the company’s strong “commitment to customer service,” Neilon felt, that’s delivered the repeat business on which they rely.
In the words of one of those customers, Carrier Sales rep Andrew Bole of the Michigan-headquartered RPM auto-transport-focused broker, any issue “gets communicated as soon as it happens — before I walk into the office the next morning.”
As “detailed as they can” with everything, too, Bole said. “We get out ahead of most of the issues that do occur.”
Company safety man and longtime trainer Ron Spring, a former owner-operator, put Car Couriers forward as a contender for Overdrive‘s Small Fleet Champ award this year. Spring describes Neilon as modest, perhaps to a fault for what he really is, the consummate businessman.
A day out looking at equipment together, Spring recalled, “I’m looking at [a truck] — ‘What’s the original cost, other options, will this really work or not?’ As soon as I finish talking, Gerry’s got the net-net figured out.”
Measured growth over three decades
The Cremona Hotel business also features the Neilon’s Tavern restaurant, which Gerry Neilon offers as a metaphor for Car Couriers’ success in one particular way.
For the locals in Cremona — roughly 550 of them all told — the tavern’s doors are always open. “If you want a cold beer and a hamburger you walk through the door,” he said. “You’ll come back if it’s good.”
The trucking Car Couriers does, well: “You do a good job. People will recommend you,” Neilon said.
The company first incorporated in 1997, hauling early on for Enterprise Rent-a-Car, likewise dealer transfers for a used-car outfit in Calgary, close to Cremona headquarters. Car “auction freight, sometimes,” Neilon said.
This is one of several Small Fleet Champ semi-finalist profiles that will air throughout the next weeks. (Access all of the published stories via this link.) Two finalists in each category (3-10 trucks, 11-30 trucks) will be announced in October.
It was nearly over before it truly started — the first high-mount and tractor they bought moved exactly six loads before, on the seventh, the “driver fell asleep and we lost that truck,” Neilon said. “So we’ve had some little difficulties here and there and everywhere.”
High-mount work provided a measure of peace of mind to the young business easing into auto work, at once.
“You think you can pull the pin on it and go get work somewhere else” with the truck, he said. Yet when Car Couriers finally “committed to the stinger” setup, “that makes you an auto hauler” full-stop. “You can get that extra vehicle on, you put one on the roof and you start hauling cars.”
[Related: Car-haul configurations: High-mount v. stinger steer, insurance requirememts, more]
The fleet today isn’t all stinger. “We still have a high-mount in the fleet,” likewise a leased owner-operator, one of two contracted, who Neilon noted is a “local guy with a Landoll” tilt trailer often enough moving dead vehicles for one or another fleet client. “No engine, gotta get it out of here — they’re an oil company.”
Owner-operators leased to Car Couriers take a 15% cut for dispatch — Darryl Cummings had a truck on with them at one time, Neilon added, though he’s been dispatching there now for 15 years.
“We don’t have much turnaround” with drivers or staff either, Neilon noted.
Drivers are paid a straight 22% of every load after starting at 20% for six months to a year. All are employees, and in Canadian money Neilon puts annual income on a range from $80K to as much as $140K, “depending on how they work and what they commit to,” he said. “Some guys just love the road and can stay out longer.”
Hit Spokane, Washington, on a Thursday with an unload and you may not make it to Aberdeen in time to load out before the early-afternoon cutoff at a load site there where new cars come off the boat. Such a driver might “camp in Aberdeen [Washington] after Friday,” spend the weekend to load out Monday to maximize opportunities.
Pictured in December 2025, after one of Car Couriers’ operators was named Driver of the Month by the Alberta Motor Transport Association, from left: Ron Spring, CEO/General Manager Gerry Neilon, and Darryl Cummings, dispatch and operations supervisor.
Added benefits:
- $10/transported-unit bonus for no claims
- Retirement matching up to 4% of income
- $1,000 every 6 months as a retention bonus
- 50/50-paid health benefits plan and spending account
The company works with auto broker wholesalers moving vehicles south into the U.S. “We’ve done it to different areas,” Neilon said, “going to Nebraska and California, Arizona. But now it’s a lot more Spokane, Billings, Montana, that kind of thing.”
Pickups from the oilfield, too. Vancouver arrivals off the boat from Mexico, prospecting for similar from Portland, Oregon, too.
The work with Bole’s RPM company has been steady of late — Hyundais and Kias up into Alberta, where those companies are just starting to open the market. Typical rates for Car Couriers take the backhaul along.
“We charge to go one-way,” Neilon said. “A backhaul is a beautiful thing when you can get it. … When you can incorporate that, it really increases your dollar per mile.”
Neilon’s got two Peterbilt 589s on order, he said, both to be set up as Stingers with Cottrell in Georgia.
Various makes are part of fleet’s mix, including this Western Star.
[Related: Soza Trucking builds solid foundation in car-haul]
Expansion, investment in facilities
Almost four years ago, Car Couriers purchased a shop in Calgary, which today serves as central maintenance facility for its trucks and trailers, partially overseen by longtime former owner-operator Ron Spring, who for a time trucked with the company.
“He worked for me for seven years,” Neilon said, “and was getting to an age he wanted to do a little less, and always did some safety stuff we relied on him for.”
He was Car Couriers’ driver trainer, too, with a long career in car-haul with other outfits before he came to the fleet. He has an office in Calgary at the shop, CCI Truck and Trailer Repair. He’s “eyes and ears on the place,” Neilon said. “I don’t get in there as often as I should.”
The shop is open to outside fleets for maintenance but also serves Car Couriers’ routine needs.
Drivers, most of whom come out of Calgary or nearby, park the trucks there, too. “We do rent out some space there to bulk haulers” based in the area, Neilon added, and have “good retention with the mechanics” on staff doing a little of everything but for heavy engine work.
Spring said the driver-turnover record there speaks to the support Neilon and company have in place. “Our turnover’s next to nothing,” Spring said, and Neilon truly “treats his drivers well. They’re paid well, good home time.”
Spring sums up his view of Neilon, truly exceptional as a trucking company owner, this way: “The guy behind the check-writing device truly cares about his people.”
With 50 years in trucking, Spring said, “this is the best guy I’ve worked for, and he doesn’t pay me to say that.”
Neilon wants five years of prior experience from any driver he hires. Car-haul experience? Even better. “We do train,” he said, noting driving eight feet up in the air loading a car hauler isn’t for everyone. “You have be mobile, like a monkey up and down and all around.”
The National Association of Small Trucking Companies sponsors the Small Fleet Championship. Finalists receive a year’s worth of membership in the association, with access to a myriad of benefits from NASTC’s well-known fuel program to drug and alcohol testing services and much more. All are recognized at the association’s annual conference, where the winners will be announced in late October in Nashville, Tennessee. Find more about the association via their website.
Neilon’s looking ahead to continued improvement in execution of the mission — revenues growing built on safety, service, “just quality of the work,” he said. “Do it right. There’s no shortcuts to this.”
On business moving ahead, “Put your fingers in a whole bunch of pies and hopefully they stay there,” he said. He’s constantly looking for “something else so we’re different than the other guy,” opportunities for “additional freight anytime you can. Let’s try to take our time and be the guys that get that little wee bit that makes that dollar per mile look even better.”
[Related: 80 years of specialized excellence: Otto Transfer]
