It may seem sometimes like the trucking industry gets little respect, whether it’s from the general public, the mainstream media or legislators. But by its sheer size alone, the trucking industry commands respect. Statistics Canada is five years behind in its annual tally of the numbers of people employed in Canada’s for-hire trucking industry and stopped surveying the private fleet sector many years ago. Yet its latest tally shows there are more than 350,000 people employed in the Canadian for-hire carrier industry. When the quiet giant that is private trucking is thrown into the mix, it’s likely that trucking accounts for about 700,000 workers in Canada. One of the challenges an industry of this size is certain to face in the future is attracting enough people from what will be a shrinking labour pool to replenish itself. Pay rates, particularly at the front ranks level, have long been a sore point and will likely need to show strong upward momentum to keep pace with other competing industries. However, too much focus may be placed on driver jobs. Trucking also offers many non-driving careers. In this issue, we present information gleaned from the Canadian Trucking Human Resources Council on pay scales for maintenance-related positions and we will look at more job groups in future issues.