LONDON, Ont. — Voyageur Transportation is so proud of its top-notch in-house training and safety programs they’re offering them to the public.

The 29-year-old family-owned company with about 600 employees operates among other things for-hire trucks, school buses and ambulances.

Corey Jarvis, director of HR and Training, says the company’s newest venture — a complete line of online industrial training programs under the banner Voyageur Training Solutions — is a natural extension of what they already do.

In fact, Jarvis says Voyageur has been providing online training for its customers for about four years. Only now they’re expanding their reach to a broader customer base.

“We’ve partnered with a software company and created courses for different industries for people who are short on time and short on money,” he tells todaystrucking.com.

The focus is on helping companies with due diligence and Jarvis says the training programs apply to everyone from new hires to supervisors. The advantage of these online programs, he adds, is that workers can complete them at their own pace, at their chosen times.

In a new economy, small fleets have to find new and
innovative ways to do training, Voyageur says.

Voyageur Training Solutions offers more than 20 courses online, ranging from transportation of dangerous goods and forklift or airbrake endorsements to surviving company health and safety audits.

“The nice thing about online training,” he says, “is I don’t have to bother an employee to come in on a Saturday. They can come in to work an hour before a shift starts or do it after they put the kids to bed at night.”

The primary market, Jarvis says, consists of small to medium-sized companies “that don’t necessarily have lots of training to do.” Too often, he says, when small or medium-sized operators hire new people they postpone training until there’s enough new people to merit a session, so the training gets put off indefinitely.

“Your typical online cost is going to be $35 per course,” he says, adding that if a company has more people training, their costs will go down accordingly.

“Training does not need to cost $2,000 per person. That doesn’t have to be the case. We’re in a new economy and we have to find new and innovative ways to do things,” Jarvis says.

The question arises: How do the folks at Voyageur know so much about this? Jarvis says simply that training and health-and-safety and compliance are hallmarks of Voyageur-run companies.

Indeed. Three years ago, when the WSIB subjected Voyageur to a surprise Workwell Audit, Voyageur passed with a 97.9-percent mark.

Most companies flunk their first Workwell. And with this new product, Voyageur can help ensure it doesn’t happen again.