In 2017, Dave Cox began asking Polaris Transportation Group (PTG) employees a profound question to know their career path: “What do you want to do in life?”
He had just become the carrier’s new president following the passing of his father Larry Cox, who founded Polaris in 1994. Both were big on investing in technology to be more efficient, scalable and competitive.
“The business situation was ready for change,” he says, and he began to establish a new framework for PTG based on five pillars: Technology, Talent, Customer Centricity, Safety and Community.
PTG offers full supply chain solutions — transport, logistics, warehousing, distribution and technology — within a niche of next-day pickup-and-delivery service between the greater Toronto area and select areas in the United States. The company has a fleet of more than 120 tractors and 280 trailers that operates from C-TPAT certified facilities that include two warehouses in Toronto and a location in Ohio that offers truckload and less-than-truckload service.
Cox describes PTG, which transports more than 300,000 orders a year across the border, as an “American company headquartered in Toronto,” with many customers, transportation partners and competitors in the United States.
In 2018, he hired Dave Brajkovich to fill a new position as chief technology officer. Brajkovich had been a technology adviser to the company since 2015 with experience in automating business systems in the financial, healthcare, manufacturing and banking industries.
