A new warehousing and distribution centre is under construction in southeast Calgary for a major transport company.
“It’s a bit novel in the industry,” says Kevin Hankinson, vice-president and general manager of Consolidated Fastfrate Inc.’s western region. The traditional name for a freight forwarder’s place of business is terminal, but Fastfrate is calling its new home a cross-dock warehousing-distribution facility.
The new site is adjacent to Canadian Pacific Railway’s intermodal facility. Consolidated Fastfrate has a deep relationship with the CPR, going beyond customer-vendor, Hankinson says. The two have many common customers.
Fastfrate and the CPR this month announced a 10-year, $400-million partnership for moving less-than-truckload freight. Consolidated Fastfrate will partner exclusively with the CPR for the next decade.
Fastfrate has been in business for 35 years with a core trade of shipments from Ontario and Quebec to the West. “In the last five years we’ve been broadening the scope of our services,” Hankinson says. The newer businesses include trucking between points within the West.
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| Illustration courtesy of Riddell Kurczaba Architects |
| Fastfrate's cross-dock in the southeast is adjacent to CPR's intermodal facility. |
The long haul from one end of the nation to the other has always been by rail, with trucks doing regional distribution.
Five years ago Fastfrate was entirely boxcar, but it has moved to intermodal shipping, with containers on flatcars for the rail haul and on wheeled chassis for the road haul.
Fastfrate’s current terminal is on a 5.5-acre site on 26th Avenue S.E. in Ramsay. The new facility is on a site of just under 20 acres between 54th and 56th Streets on Dufferin Boulevard S.E. The Dufferin industrial area is just north of 114th Avenue S.E.
The new facility has 28-ft. clearance in a 61,000-sq.-ft. warehouse, and a 42,000-sq.-ft. cross-dock. It’s just a short truck haul from the CPR facility. The cross-dock is set up for long-haul freight on one side and local trucks on the other for immediate delivery.
The warehouse is for larger shipments and the freight forwarder’s customers may keep some local inventory there. “When an order comes in, we’ll pick it up and deliver it to their customer,” says Hankinson.
Goods arriving in the region by rail are trucked to the warehouse or cross-dock and take a different truck to their destination.
The volume of business makes this economical, and it gets traffic off the highways, so it’s better for the environment, he says.
A planned second phase of the Dufferin facility will add both warehouse and cross-docking space.
Resale housing values are set to soar across Canada, with Calgary leading the way, according to a report by Re/Max and Clayton Research.
A joint report by Re/Max of Western Canada, Re/Max Ontario-Atlantic Canada and Clayton Research says values should rise $150 billion as boomers move into their prime home-ownership years.
Home ownership values should rise by about $350 billion, much of that due to new dwellings. But existing stock will also appreciate.
Calgary is expected to lead the rise in values, with prices going up 20 to 25 per cent by 2011, after inflation. The companies attribute the rise to the strong first-time buyer segment. The younger half of the baby boom is the group considered most likely to move up.
Clayton Research analysed 12 housing markets across Canada for Re/Max. The report found several factors to support growth in the housing market, including demographics, income growth and population growth.
Architects earned 14 per cent more in 1999 than 1998, Statistics Canada reports. The profession earned $1.2 billion, with 71 per cent of the fees coming from institutional and commercial
projects. Revenue went up 24 per cent in Ontario, where building permits hit a 12-year peak in 1999.
