Craig Grigor had a good thing going. A licensed trailer mechanic and welder, he started a maintenance business seven years ago called KingPin Transportation Services. He built the business himself, steadily developing a list of clients to the point where he was looking after 283 trailers.

Then a nasty fall two years ago took it all away from him. Laid up in hospital for months while his badly fractured ankle and wrist were rebuilt, he had to let all the contracts go.

“I can’t say I’m real happy about the way things turned out,” Grigor says, flipping a KingPin business card across the table. “I had a good business and it was all gone in 30 seconds. I have to go a whole other route now.”

That whole other route takes him through the Canadian Automotive and Trucking Institute (CATI) in Cambridge, Ont., an innovative if unassuming school dedicated to addressing the labor shortage in the automotive aftermarket and trucking industries. Its “trucking operations specialist” course is designed to give new options to people like Grigor who have experience in the transportation industry but, for whatever reason, can no longer do the job they’d been hired to do.

Grigor’s plan is to return to work as a maintenance supervisor. Still months away from a CATI diploma and the eight weeks of work placement that will follow it, he’s confident about his future. “I’m employable. I know I’ll find something,” he says. “And this course is going to give me skills I didn’t have before.”

Rodney Orr, manager of the trucking operations division at CATI says people like Grigor are more than just employable, they’re desperately needed.

“We not only need more drivers but more professionals in the office,” he says. “Few places offer training for that.”

CATI aims to retrain experienced trucking employees-many of whom have been injured-so they can be productive in new roles like safety compliance officer, driver manager, or maintenance supervisor. Orr says the industry’s attitude toward retaining employees has changed in recent years. “If there were any problems with a driver, the company just cut its losses and said, ‘Thanks anyway, goodbye.’ Next one doesn’t work out? ‘Thanks anyway, goodbye.’ With the driver shortage, trucking companies can’t afford to do that anymore.”

Instead, some are sending injured workers for retraining to fill other administrative positions within the firm.

“Just because someone’s injured doesn’t mean he’s useless,” says Randy Adams, Ontario regional manager for Praxair Canada, which views CATI as a hiring ground. “It may mean they have to move to a different job within the company. They may no longer be able to drive truck, but they still have training that’s relevant to other positions within the company. We have to get past the stigma that says injured workers are useless.”

Tom DuMont, safety and compliance officer at Contract Express Ltd., believes the motivation for new attitudes toward injured workers is part human decency and part economic prudence.

“If you let an injured worker go, you’re wasting an individual who knows the company. He knows the paperwork, he knows the procedures, he knows how we operate. There’s a lot of time and money invested in that alone,” he says. “Just because someone gets hurt, you don’t just put them on the shelf and forget about them. That’s callous.”

DuMont’s new hire, Glen Wilkinson, was a driver for 15 years before an accident sidelined him. The company he was with had no other work for him, so he found himself at CATI, hoping for a second career within the trucking industry. Now he’s a driver trainer at Contract. An eight-week placement turned into a job.

“It was a really good course,” he says. “I’d taken driver trainer courses before, but this gave me a lot more information, including the safety compliance end of it.”

CATI student Donna Haviland, another former driver, hopes to make a similar transition. She had wanted to get into administration, but there just wasn’t any movement at the company she was with. Tired of waiting, she quit her job and went to CATI to learn how to be an operations manager. Now loaded with confidence, she figures her first move in that direction will be as a dispatcher.

“This upgrades my knowledge and gets me back in the office environment,” she says. “With the skills I’m learning, I’ll be in a position to help a company save some money.”

Saving a company money is what it’s all about, says Donna Pelling, CATI’s director of administration.

“There is a real need out there for the people who make trucking a safe and profitable industry,” she says. “There is a shortage of trained managers.”

Bill Cody, a laid-off driver trainer, says he tapped into management skills he didn’t know he had when he went to CATI. He’s now a delivery and service team leader for Domino’s Pizza Distribution, supervising six trucks and 12 drivers throughout Ontario and Quebec.

“When I got let go, I was like a deer caught in the headlights,” he says. “I didn’t know which way to go. I had no computer skills. I couldn’t type at all. They gave me the necessary skills, both on the computer and in the office to get me where I am today.”

SIDEBAR:

Canadian Automotive and Trucking Institute * Location: Cambridge, Ont. * Phone: 1-888/774-6647 * Full-time trucking instructors: 2 * Annual student capacity: 128 * Course: Trucking-Operations Specialist * Covers: Safety compliance (federal motor carrier regulations, Highway Traffic Act, hours of service regulations, and transportation of dangerous goods); fleet maintenance (preventive maintenance, inspection regulations, and inspection-related software); and driver management (communication skills, management skills, tracking systems, and dispatch software.) * Cost: $4800, plus $250 for books and materials