"From Gear-jamming to number crunching."      home
   Excerpts from article written by Brandi Cramer for Truck News.

Oshawa, Ont. - her deep understanding of the needs of a trucker is one of the reasons Maria Fotheringham has shifted gears from driving to running her own accounting firm.
Fotheringham Bookkeeping/Accounting and Income Tax Service caters almost exclusively to professional drivers and more specifically, owner operators.
Fotheringham drove tractor-trailer for almost 15 years, some out of her native Edmonton and the rest out of Ontario. She has worked for several different companies and has hauled a variety of things including gravel.
In 1980, Fotheringham took an accounting course in Edmonton and 16 years later upgraded at Durham College where she scored perfect on her final test.
She spent time working as a bookkeeper and office manager before being laid off.
"Driving truck has as much paper work as any other business if not more," explains Fotheringham. "You have to be on top of it, your truck is your business; that is your lifeline," she explains.
Still making pick-ups
What sets her service apart from many others is her focus on the truck drivers. She is willing to pick-up owner/operator's financial information at the driver's convenience.
"Rather than having them take it in some place, I just go over once a month and pick up all their stuff and sort it out for them." She says. "I'll drive to their homes, meet them at a truck stop, drive to their yards, whatever, the convenience is for the driver."
The monthly contract can also benefit the trucker, allowing the opportunity to address areas of concern immediately as opposed to three to four months down the road. This saves a lot of grief.
When they (drivers) are doing long distances, they're only home for a day or a day-and-a-half, and some times they're only home once every three weeks," she explains. "If they're anything like my husband, when you've been on the road that whole week, you want to come home, put your feet up and relax. You don't want to be running around dealing with all this stuff."
The best advice Fotheringham can give to any owner/op is to keep all of their receipts.