The evolution of DRIVING FORCE is tru-ly one of Alberta’s great business success stories. Company President Jeff Polovick

started Grove Rentals and Leasing 35 years ago this month in a small service station in Spruce Grove, just outside of Edmonton. Since then, he’s guided it unflinchingly through a mercurial economy to become DRIVING FORCE Vehicle Rentals, Sales and Leasing. With a standing inventory of nearly 10,000 vehicles at 20 loca-tions and over 375 employees in Alberta, B.C., Saskatchewan, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, DRIVING FORCE is now one of western Canada’s largest vehicle suppliers.

This month also marks the 20th Anniversary of DRIVING FORCE’s Calgary Branch. “We opened this office in 1993 to better serve the full spectrum of the oil field sector,” says Branch Manager Craig Strachan. “Calgary is home to so many corporate head offices, from everywhere. We’re handling more of the white collar market here, while Edmonton services more of the blue collar sector.”

Tourism is another important component of the Calgary vehicle leasing market with which DRIVING FORCE has had great success. “We rent and lease 28-passenger buses for six months to a year to clients who use them to tour groups through the mountains,” Strachan says, adding that these tours are especially popular with visitors from Japan and China. “The glaciers are a big draw.” Winter trips through these areas pose certain challenges, which DRIVING FORCE has addressed by offering specially designed buses for the task. “One important feature they have is double paned glass. With any other vehicle, when you get a couple of dozen passengers looking out the win-dows in those temperatures, they fog up. You can’t see a thing. We’ve solved that problem. There are only a handful of these buses around,” he says, “and we’re the only company that rents and leases them on a serious basis.”

Clarity of vision isn’t just important for tourists, of course. It’s important for businesses, too. DRIVING FORCE prides itself on providing the same level of service and quality to custom-ers regardless of which city they’re visited in. That’s one reason

that the Calgary branch has just completed a full renovation. Whether in Alberta or BC, or Saskatchewan when you pull into a DRIVING FORCE lot, you’ll be certain you’ve come to the right place. The building’s shining glass and clean lines, reflected in the polished windshields and gleaming paint of the neat rows of cars and trucks outside will let you know that when you walk through those doors, the selection of vehicles and level of care you’ll receive will not only be exactly what you need - they’ll be consistently above what you’d expect. That’s the DRIVING FORCE way of doing business.

2332 - 23 Street NE (the corner of 23rd Avenue & Barlow Trail)

Calgary, AB T2E 8N3Phone: (403) 296 - 0770

Toll Free: 1-800-936-9353

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: MIKE CRYER, RENTAL MANAGER, JOANNA BUSHEY, USED VEHICLE MANAGER, CRAIG STRACHAN, BRANCH MANAGER, AND DARRELL NICKLASSEN, LEASE MANAGER

drivingforce.ca

35 YEARS ON THE FORCE

35YEARS

BY MARK KANDBORG