Changing lanes – Canadian Tire’s Gary Fast moves his career onto a new road

After a 27-year career with Canadian Tire, Gary Fast has made a major career change. He’s now running a store for Canadian Tire. And while that may sound like a punchline, it’s no joke.

Fast has been honoured as this year’s Freight Management Association (FMA) Supply Chain Executive of the Year, in recognition of his long career at the iconic Canadian retailer, and for his role in introducing significant innovations in the company’s transportation operations. The well-known executive is making a seamless transition to entrepreneurship.

Fast said in an exclusive interview with Inside Logistics that becoming an entrepreneur and owning a store has been a long-term goal. “Now I’ve finally gotten that opportunity,” he said.

“I would say that from my supply chain career, those skills have been very transferable into this role and have served me quite well in terms of adapting to my new career. Everything from forecasting and replenishment, that’s what we do in the store. We need to order the right products for our customers and our communities, and we need to make sure that it’s on the shelf.

“And we think about being able to process many shipments coming into the stores, warehousing, logistics, and of course, when I was in the transportation and supply chain roles that I had, it was all about servicing the stores, Now I’m the recipient of that service and have to extend that out to the community that I’m in and the customer base that I serve.”

Moving to the front line

Fast left his corporate role as Canadian Tire’s vice-president of transportation late last year, before moving into the front-line retail side. What followed was six months of full-time training the company puts prospective store owners through.

“It was an intense training program with the opportunity to have hands-on practical experience in four stores across the country to get a sense for how the different types of Canadian Tires operate at different sizes. And then when you’re done, you get the opportunity to be awarded a store and start your career,” Fast recounted.

When the training was over, Fast was offered the store in Dauphin, Manitoba. About 300 km northwest of Winnipeg, it’s a smaller market with a population of just under 10,000. The store employs 15 people. He is enjoying the transition from the scale and pace of life in Toronto.

“People here are really great. I grew up in a small town, so definitely it’s not a culture shock. I enjoy being here. The people are very warm, open. You really get to know who’s who in town and who’s shopping at your store. They’ll come in, they’ll pull you aside, they’ll tell you what they like, they’ll tell you what they don’t like. But the one thing they are is friendly!”

Looking back on his 27 years at Canadian Tire corporate, Fast is now grateful for the innovations and process improvements that have given the retailer a robust supply chain operation.

“I was accountable for, or my team was accountable for, all of the deliveries to our associate stores and affiliate banners, and now I’m the recipient of those deliveries. When something goes wrong, when something’s delayed, when something doesn’t come in a reliable manner, you really notice it.

“But I’ve also noticed how much diligence the team or the corporation has put into all those processes over the years, and those breakdowns and failures are so few and far between that when the occasional one may happen, then you really notice it. But we really count on that strong supply chain team to keep doing what they’re doing in order to keep those products coming into this community and getting inventory into the stores so that we can serve our customers. That’s all dependent on a stable supply chain, which, thank goodness, we have.”

Building a robust supply chain

Transportation innovations that support this robust supply chain that happened under Fast’s watch include Canadian Tire being the first carrier in Ontario to be able to run a longer combination vehicle. Following that, they developed the first 60-foot container. Fast said there must be at least 1,000 of them in the fleet now.

The company also created capabilities for container stacking and started two container stacking yards during the pandemic when space was at a premium and you couldn’t find a yard. “We said you can go up,” Fast recounted. The team figured out the stacker machinery they’d need and the processes needed to actually run these container terminals in their own yards.

“It came down to figuring out how to prep the ground and how to pick the right candidates of products that go in the containers so that you’re not making unnecessary moves, and how to integrate that into your technology and into your everyday business,” he said.

The pandemic also prompted the company to start chartering its own vessels. As the 14th largest importer of containerized goods in North America, Canadian Tire had to punch above its class in order to get capacity, Fast said in 2021. With the big shipping lines running a practical monopoly, it was a challenge to pull it off.

Chartering the vessel “allows me to run a charter year-round lop off my peaks, so that I’m a flat-line customer to the steamship lines, because they don’t like to deal with peaks. It’s a capability now that we’ve unlocked. And I think as time goes on, we’re going to get better at that capability,” Fast said at the time.

Taking a 25 percent stake in Ashcroft Terminals was a strategic move for the company. The $40 million investment in the private rail terminal in British Columbia’s interior allowed the company to gain control over another critical part of its supply chain: transloading.

It just made sense, Fast said in a 2021 interview with Inside Logistics, “we own our distribution centres. We have our own tractor fleet. We own our own container and chassis fleet.” Gaining control of transloading is “another element in the supply chain that you can control, that you have the ability to scale. It’s about ensuring you have the capacity to run your business as well as having redundancy and resiliency,” he said.

“I was really proud of the team for being able to drive that, the Ashcroft opportunity, integrating rail and transload right from the vessel. That was a very large-scale effort by our strategy team, by a lot of different people, and I was really happy to have played a key role in that.”

Culture and leadership

Fast had plenty of time at Canadian Tire to learn and influence the culture, as well as build a more resilient supply chain. Serving in 13 or 14 different positions, starting as a logistics analyst right out of university, he had lots of exposure to different areas of the business. He had two years as a mechant, responsible for buying the camping line for Canadian Tire that serviced four locations.

“That’s where I really got to see a little more of the hands-on retail. And that started to get me interested, but then I had an opportunity to become an associate vice-president in transportation,” he said. He held two associate vice-president roles before becoming the vice-president of transportation in 2018.

Over the years, through all the different experiences at Canadian Tire, Fast said his favourite accomplishment has always been building and leading teams. “There’s a lot of great moments and accomplishments, but being a people leader is really where I found a lot of my passion,” he said.

“And building high performance teams is probably the thing that I’m most proud of. The results always speak to themselves then. So when there’s results, it’s not because I was able to do something, it’s because I built a team that was able to deliver it.”

He points to the pandemic as the perfect example. “We were able to source product when nobody could. We were able to do incredible things like charter vessels, and none of that would’ve been possible without the people that I worked with. I had an amazing team.

“And that’s all about building culture, mentoring, creating some strategic direction, but then empowering people and giving them some guardrails, but empowering them to do the work. And I think having that coaching, having that ability to coach and to be able to mentor people is what drives those drives those innovations.”

Giving back

Fast didn’t just apply his leadership skills within the company. He also did a turn as FMA chair and on the Toronto Transportation Club executive. He points out the importance of building business relationships as well as giving back to the industry where he built his career. “The industry has given a lot to me. Participating in these types of organizations was an important way, not just to make connections, but also to be able to share ideas and to contribute and to give back,” he said.

Being recognized as the FMA Supply Chain Executive of the Year is a true honour, Fast said. “Whenever I see this particular award given out, it’s more like an accumulation over a career where you’ve actually made an impact in the industry. And I feel like I’ve been able to give back to the industry and to give back to the transportation world and the supply chain world, and I think they recognize that and we’re happy to recognize it through this very prestigious and fantastic award.”

The staff at the Dauphin Canadian Tire store, and its customers should count themselves lucky to have Fast on their team. He may be one of the newest dealers in the country, but the skills, experiences and insights he gained through his 27-year career at Canadian Tire corporate should make him a dealer unlike any other, with his finger on the supply chain pulse.