We’re Celebrating
20 Years!

This February 18th marks 20 years of PiVAL. It’s been quite a ride to say the least. What started with just one service, has now grown to a full range of transportation services, including intermodal, cross-docking, over the road transportation, drayage, and expedite, along with five fully integrated warehouses across Canada. And all thanks to the hard work of all the amazing PiVAL employees, the customers that trusted us to handle their supply chain needs, and the partners that have supported us along the way.

Thank you for all your support over the last two decades, none of this would be possible without you. We look forward to our continued partnership.

This video is an interview with Mario La Barbera, the President of PiVAL, talking about his 20 year journey. We hope you enjoy it.

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Our Values

In everything we do, the following values guide us in delivering optimal and sustainable logistics and supply chain solutions.

We are a team of experienced and skilled logistics and supply chain professionals. Every one of us appreciates the importance of diligence, ideation, and execution with a singular purpose: to optimize our customers’ operations.

Meaning Behind PiVAL

The symbol for “Pi”, the Greek letter commonly used in mathematics.

It represents a mathematical constant which represents our movement, our consistency, and our certainty.

Empower Partnership

More than working together towards a common goal, partnership means doing everything we can to ensure our customers’ prosperity, as they help us prosper.

Maximize Value

Before we do anything for our customers, we ensure that it creates more value for their investment in us.

Always Do Better

We identify processes that produce positive outcomes, use key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress, analyze results and implement improvements. Then we repeat the cycle.

Respect for All

We carefully curate team members based on their ability to contribute to our customers’ success. We are all experts in our roles. We have a voice. We listen. We learn. We improve.

Commitment - Give Everything We Have

We empower all our people, leverage all our assets and apply all our technology to enable our customers’ to reach their logistics, supply chain and overall business objectives.

Meet our Team

Mario La Barbera

President

Mario La Barbera

President

After graduating from McGill University, eager to apply his studies, Mario decided to move to the US. Based in Philadelphia and New York, he never turned down an opportunity to travel to virtually all east coast ports, intermodal terminals and hundreds of plants to learn more about supply chains and transportation.

After five years, he returned to Canada and held Director roles for two large Class 1 railroads. Realizing his entrepreneurial skills were better used in smaller organizations, Mario created Acurail and later co-founded PiVAL International in 2003, based in Montreal.

Under his leadership and strategic guidance, PiVAL built a strong team overseeing operations in dedicated warehousing, cross dock, expedite and integrated transportation solutions. Mario has more recently embarked on changing the company culture to embrace operational excellence using the Shingo Model.

Mario is on several transportation committees and chaired logistics’ councils to advise governments and policy makers. A proud father of three active children and married to his childhood friend, Mario’s entire family shares his devotion to fundraising for children’s hospitals.

Rose Di Pancrazio

VP of People & Culture

Rose Di Pancrazio

VP of People & Culture

Rose graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Commerce. Her professional career began in auditing before she assumed various roles in supply chain companies across Canada and the US in the electronics, food, beauty and retail industries.

She joined PiVAL in 2003 to help launch the company. In her role as Special Projects Manager, Rose was directly involved in numerous start-ups of new warehouses and managed all procurement. In 2015, the role of Risk Manager was added to her procurement role. As Risk Manager, she became responsible to identify and mitigate financial, safety and security risks for PiVAL and implemented standard H&S, security procedures and policies throughout the company.

In 2018, Rose assumed a leadership role in human capital and was promoted to Vice-President – People & Culture in 2020. As a strategic People business partner, she is responsible to build a diverse, emotionally intelligent, and inclusive culture driving employee engagement across all departments to support the company’s long-term growth.

Tina Dematos

VP of Finance

Tina Dematos

VP of Finance

As VP Finance, Tina is responsible for all the company’s financial functions including accounting, audit, treasury, and capital resources. She also is responsible for optimizing financial performance. She leads the information technology services group, where she leads the development and operation of the company’s infrastructure, platforms, services, and applications. She is responsible for the ongoing series of innovation initiatives and solutions that support PiVAL growth strategy. With her drive for process improvement and her expertise in information technology she plays a critical role as PiVAL delivers on its aggressive five-year growth strategy.

Before joining PiVAL in April 2020, Tina served as Director of Commercial Effectiveness & E-Sales for Pfizer Inc. Prior to that, she served as Director of Operations and Director of Finance for Hospira Inc, a Pharmaceutical and Medical Device company.

Tina has 23 years in the Pharmaceutical industry where she successfully managed supply chain, customer relationship, information technology as well as the device support center. She has vast experience in the financial area from commercial to manufacturing. Tina also sat on the board for the Canadian Pharmaceutical Distribution Network.

Tina holds an Honors Bachelor’s degree in Accounting with a major in Finance from McGill University and is also a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA).

Stephen Quinn

VP of Sales & Marketing

Jacob Brown

Key Account Manager

Ahmad Abdulsamad

Sales Associate

Ryan Buisman

Key Account Manager

Diana Salinitro

Sales Associate

Paul J. Birnbaum

Director of U.S.A. Sales

Rod Levac

Director of Business Development

Dean Egger

Operations Manager

Raechel Leite

Operations Manager

Lee Craig

Operations Manager

Andrew McNab

Director of Distribution

Patrick Tassé

Operations Manager

Alexia La Barbera

Director of Customer Success

Carl La Barbera

Customer Success Associate

Danielle Bendavid

Director of Quality and Compliance

Danielle Levitt

Quality & Compliance Manager

Brian Carras

Director of Transportation

Paul Martin

Director of IT

Lin Chen

Director of Finance

Founder's Story

As a kid I delivered groceries in a wooden wagon from the local supermarket to inner-city homes. I realized that tip amounts were directly related to being customer centric and service minded.

Improving the service meant exploring other solutions. Trading in the wooden wagon for a specialized bike equipped with a large pannier improved speed and efficiency. I could cut delivery times by more than half. And clients could call in their grocery orders from their homes which I would deliver within two hours. Delivery to home started in the 1960’s for this child…

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Fast forward a few decades, and the concept in supply chain remains the same. All customers have one thing in common. They want reliable and predictable service to be on time at a reasonable cost. If we understand these simple concepts, it’s not that difficult to scale a business. The speed of growth depends on talent and technology you throw at it. We embrace technology so you always have tracking and visibility of your product during the entire journey.

There is no way I will take credit for PiVAL’s success. But I will say that culture is so important to attract and retain the right people to the team. The culture starts at the top. Building a customer centric team is the root of our success.

We work tirelessly to satisfy our customers. You have our entire team’s commitment.