CAMBRIDGE, Ont. (June 20, 2005) — Dan Einwechter’s outfit was only about 50 power units away from its one-truck ‘gypsy’ origins when we launched this magazine and profiled the Cambridge, Ont. fleet in our very first issue. That was 18 years ago, and Challenger Motor Freight was creating benchmarks even then.

As the company moves into its impressive new headquarters and maintenance shop facility now, Challenger is raising the bar again.

Ceremonial shovels hit the dirt on a 53-acre parcel of land in Cambridge, Ont. a year ago, and the company’s complicated move into its new 113,000-sq-ft home began early last month. In May, maintenance director Wayne Scott had the 24/7 maintenance shop and the separately housed post-trip inspection lanes pretty much up and running. The trailer shop, the body shop, the state-of-the-art 50-ft paint booth, and the truck wash (touchless for tractors, brush for trailers) were getting there.

Scott and shop manager Morris Boudreau have 50,000-sq-ft of maintenance space to work with, plus a 6,000-sq-ft parts mezzanine, and it’s full of the latest technology. They can handle two full tractor-trailers plus two bobtail tractors at a time in the dedicated safety lanes, and on day one they serviced 62 trucks in the three-door facility. The next day they already had it up to 150.

When drivers come off the road, they run through there for an inspection, fuelling (indoors), and any necessary lubrication. But much more happens. As the truck rolls into the shop it drives through a short track just outside the door that, using Michelin’s eTire system, reads in-tire sensors and reports on air pressure and tire temperature wheel by wheel. Once inside, the rig passes over a small pad in the floor — it doesn’t have to stop — that assesses tractor and trailer wheel alignment automatically, then displays a report on a monitor instantly. That’s a Hunter Alignment innovation and it should save both downtime and money.

In a separate and much bigger building, the tractor repair shop can accommodate 12 bobtails at a time, four of them with pits underneath which also have common mechanics’ stations. There’s an alignment rack in there and a crane above. In a separate wing the trailer shop can handle routine service on six trailers at once plus another four needing larger repairs. As in the adjacent body shop, there’s a crane and meaty tie-downs in the floor to facilitate frame-straightening.

Perhaps the single biggest innovation in the new Challenger complex is the way the adjacent 56,000-sq-ft office building is heated and cooled. With a view to keeping costs down and doing the environment a favor at the same time, Einwechter and chief financial officer Gene Moser chose a ‘geothermal’ solution by NextEnergy of nearby Elmira, Ont. Using water coursing through 90,000 ft of pipe laid underground — covering almost three acres — heat is drawn from the ground by heat pumps and distributed in the building by water-to-air heat exchangers. In warm weather the process is reversed to provide air conditioning. Challenger’s building is one of the largest commercial applications of this new technology in the country, and one of the first.

The office building, to be finished in late summer, is full of other innovations, some of them quite subtle. For example, most people won’t notice that the back of the building is exactly the same as the front. Why? Einwechter explains that he doesn’t want drivers to feel like second-class citizens who have to use the back door when they come to visit dispatch. Less subtle is the driving simulator to be installed on the ground floor. Not cheap, but a hugely useful training aid.

Einwechter, who has served the industry as chairman of both the Ontario Trucking Association and the Canadian Trucking Alliance, is not a quiet and retiring man, and he’s obviously unafraid to break new ground. His new headquarters facility offers proof of that, setting several benchmarks for others to follow.