Overview
Efficient and reliable transportation has always been the irreplaceable foundation supporting Canada’s economic growth. Participants in this sector today, however, are contending with an unprecedented array of challenges and opportunities. Goods and commodities are routinely shipped via intermodal services, coordinated and tracked by sophisticated logistics services against exacting customer-imposed timetables. At the same time, industry consolidation and enterprise reorganizations continue apace, regulations grow more complicated, long-standing trade agreements are suddenly revised, and rapidly-emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, distributed ledger/blockchain, sharing apps and the gig economy, and autonomous vehicles promise to transform (or disrupt) entire business models.
Operating successfully in such an environment naturally requires a sophisticated and holistic approach to business and to serving customer needs, and industry players require legal services that meet the same standard.
The Miller Thomson Transportation & Logistics team provides expert advice on all modes of transportation:
- Aviation
- Highway (truck and bus)
- Marine
- Rail
- Pipeline
Our team includes some of the most experienced and effective practitioners in the sector whose insight into industry-specific issues like safety, rights-of-way, commercial agreements, common carrier obligations and cargo liability is second to none. Practitioners who can rapidly assemble and lead teams of in-house experts from specialties so often required by this industry: M&A, financing, tax, insolvency, litigation, regulatory compliance, environmental, technology, labour & employment, occupational safety, interprovincial and international trade. What’s more, we bolster this breadth of expertise with a local presence that perhaps only transportation companies can fully appreciate. With twelve offices across Canada, we are the national law firm that is most likely to have a lawyer close to the site of an incident or dispute when timing matters most.
Faced with simultaneous demands for consistent delivery and for transformational change, our clients trust us to see their world in as much detail as they do, and to get to the essence of their problems faster than they can alone.
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Notable Matters
- Represented the CIT Group / Equipment Financing Inc. in the Lac Mégantic derailment class action, and parallel CCAA proceedings, in conjunction with lawyers for parallel US proceedings, in one of the most complex multijurisdictional class action/CCAA proceedings and settlements of its kind in Canada at the time.
- Counsel to Providence Grain Group Inc. in the sale of a 51% stake in the bulk grain transport and delivery business of Columbia Containers Ltd. to Timber Investments Ltd.
- Canadian counsel to Daseke, the largest owner and leading consolidator of open deck specialized transportation solutions in North America, in its acquisition of Aveda Transportation and Energy Services in a $42.6 million transaction, plus a payoff of $54.8 million in Aveda debt.
- Canadian counsel to Texas-based Daseke in its acquisition of Big Freight Systems Inc., a top-tier safety ranked open deck carrier with a specialization in the power sports market segment, headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
