RIDGETOWN, Ont. — When Mitchell Pool received a letter telling him the ‘Z’ endorsement on his class A licence was no longer valid, he was miffed.

He received his commercial licence training at Fanshawe College in London, Ont. and that was nearly two years ago.

On top of that, Pool’s not even a full-time trucker. He spent last summer hauling grain in western Canada and uses a single axle truck on occasion, or operates a fertilizer spreader.

"Whatever my job is, I need to have air brakes," he tells todaystrucking.com, which is why the ‘Z’ endorsement is so important to his livelihood.

The reason for the letter was beyond Pool’s control. During a routine program inspection, Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation discovered that one instructor at the college was not conducting the training and testing for the ‘Z’ endorsement in accordance with MTO standards. It just turns out he was Pool’s instructor.

As a result, all the students who received lessons from this instructor in the past two years received letters similar to the one Pool got – 125 in total.

While the MTO says these kinds of things don’t happen very often, they take it very seriously when it does.

"These are infrequent events," says Bob Nichol, spokesman for MTO.  "However, the Ministry takes breaches of the program seriously and once aware takes immediate action."

Pool will get a chance this week — free of charge — to regain the endorsement at Fanshawe College.

Everyone else who received a letter from MTO will get similar treatment and if the first go-around doesn’t go well, they’ll get another freebie after that.