More History
The five-year contract would pay the Bouchard's $5,000 a year for plowing 29 miles of roads. Not seeing much snow that year, Harold knew he would need to find something else to do to keep the truck busy, so he redesigned the plow truck to carry pulp logs whenever the roads were plowed. "The following spring, I worked at planting potatoes, and then I started working in construction at the air base in Presque Isle," Bouchard said. He worked that same routine in 1957, plowing snow and hauling pulp logs.
Then one day in the spring of 1958, Harold stopped at his uncle's Dodge truck dealership in Fort Kent. Gilman Bouchard, an individual who played an important role in helping establish H.O. Bouchard Inc., told his nephew about some holdover 1957 Dodge trucks at a dealership in Malden, Massachusetts and urged him to buy one. Uncle and Nephew flew to Logan International Airport in Boston and took a taxi to Malden. Harold found a truck but realized he had little cash available to buy his first truck. His uncle offered his assistance by contributing $1500 for the down payment. Harold's father cosigned for the loan from the bank and the young man from northern Aroostook County soon drove his first truck home from the dealership. The first vehicle of what would later become H.O. Bouchard Inc. was on the road.
He purchased the truck assuming there would be more work to do at the Presque Isle Air Force Base but quickly found out there wasn't any work left for him. Harold then decided to head to Bangor for two weeks and go to work for J.R. Cianchette Inc working on building a cloverleaf for Interstate 95. Those two weeks extended to the rest of the summer.
Five years later, Harold bought his second 10-wheeler; a B-Model Mack (replicated years later by H.O Bouchard Inc. service technicians and today it has a special location on its Hampden facility.) In 1972, Harold contracted with Great Northern Paper to haul wood from that company's Scott Brooks camps to GNP's Millinocket mill. He had constructed a three bay, 50-by-80-foot maintenance shop after buying 13 acres on Hampden's Coldbrook Road in 1970; aware that trucking presented multiple economic opportunities, Harold incorporated his company as H.O. Bouchard Inc. in 1974 after near bankruptcy and pursued year round trucking opportunities.
-Harold O. Bouchard
In 1977, Harold purchased Milford-based Ralph E. Curtis & Son, an interstate flatbed carrier, after his general manager at the time, Bob Farrington, made a comment about not having anything to do. "I thought to myself that buying Ralph E. Curtis & Son would certainly keep him busy, so I did," Harold explained. Prior to that, Harold did a lot of work in logging and construction, but with the acquisition started to diversify the company as a whole and started hauling for paper companies, oil companies, lumber mills, and log home manufacturers. Even though H.O. Bouchard Inc. still trucked wood out on the Golden Road, the Hampden operations were the heart of the company.
In May 1980, St. Regis Paper Company asked Harold to take over running its fleet of 17 trucks. This acquisition expanded HOB's fleet and necessitated hiring additional drivers. Diversification also continued in 1991 when HOB spun off Comstock Woodlands Corporation as a new company. What started as a one-man operation in 1958, H.O. Bouchard Inc. now employs 160 people across the state of Maine.
-Harold O. Bouchard
The ability to meet each customer's demands has been an important selling point for the company. We've always been able to respond to situations," Bouchard said. "If we tackle something, we have a tendency to make things happen." His success would not have been possible without the assistance of capable employees, and Bouchard praises the men and women who have brought his company from a one-man operation to a point where the firm's trucks roll on every highway in Maine, and throughout the United States and Atlantic Canada.
