Chris Trajkovski, Bison’s new VP Fleet Maintenance.

Chris Trajkovski is the relatively new VP Fleet Maintenance at Bison Transport — certainly one of Canada’s best known carriers. Interestingly, Trajkovski, along with his wife Susan and two teenage boys, made the move to Bison’s Winnipeg base from Texas. It gives a sense of just how respected the Canadian-grown carrier is in the trucking industry.

And Trajkovski isn’t coming from a small operation, either. He left his role as National Sustainability Manager at Frito-Lay to take on the role at Bison.

Today’s Trucking caught up with the new VP to talk about his reasons for coming to Bison, what his goals are, and how he’s adjusting to Canada.

Jason Rhyno: Dying to ask: Why move from Texas to Manitoba?

Chris Trajkovski: (laughs) I’m not a native of Texas. I lived in Texas for the last six years and I’ve moved several times over my career. Originally, I’m from just outside of Chicago.

JR: Either way, it’s a big move from Frito-Lay to Bison. I’m curious as to what your reasons were.

CT: It was interesting because my wife and I were looking for a new challenge and a new opportunity. We had been looking originally in the Great Lakes area and were looking to get further north geographically.

I had 15 years with PepsiCo and they were a phenomenal organization; I had a very good position and certainly the right opportunity, but it was time to branch out, it was time to learn something new and lead a different team. In my research — and we had been looking for almost two years for the right opportunity and several came along — it was only one that fit the bill in terms of what we wanted to do longer term. And that was working for, number one, a privately held company that was well established, and one with a good track record and certainly a reputation to go with it. As I did my industry homework and as I interviewed people and suppliers — OE suppliers and different fleets — the feedback was overwhelmingly consistent that Bison was a high-quality organization.

So we started talking in the first part of the second quarter of 2012. They had a lot of questions for me and I had a lot of questions for the team at Bison. As I spoke to them and eventually met face-to-face, it further validated that it was a direction we wanted to pursue, not only from a career standpoint but from a personal perspective as well.

JR: When you say “career standpoint”, what specifically were you looking for?

CT: In my last position at Frito, my role was as a Fleet Sustainability Manager, specifically on natural gas. While that was certainly a challenge and progressive from an alternative fuel standpoint, it was just one segment and I was looking more, in terms of a leadership perspective, for something that dealt with the whole function. So purchasing and acquisitions, specifications, engineering, maintenance, shop maintenance, talent acquisition, talent retention — the whole operation of fleet. That wasn’t something that was there at Frito — certainly attainable, but very far down the horizon.

JR: How is your family adjusting?

CT: The boys met a new circle of friends and have adopted some new outdoor sports! You know, we made this a family decision and that was part of what the appeal was with the Bison family in that it was just that: a family. It wasn’t just about the employment of one person; it was about the move of my family and from a personal perspective, that was very important.

JR: What are a few of your top responsibilities as VP Fleet Maintenance?

CT: Number one is to provide safe, reliable cost effective transportation for operations. They are our internal customer. So preventive maintenance, safety, certainly having the forum and open conversation between the driver group and the maintenance group — that’s number one.

Number two is having infrastructure in place to be able to maintain the fleet. There are pockets where we have to outsource, but it’s really leveraging our internal expertise. That’s technical expertise, troubleshooting expertise, diagnostics, it’s being able to get the asset utilization harvested and harnessed, and optimize the equipment utilization.

The third would be, certainly from a career perspective — not my career — but taking the talent that we have, the human talent we have and cultivate that to the next level. So that means enriching them and providing them with new opportunities as our family and business grows, as our infrastructure grows — it allows them to grow with the organization. So providing career challenges and career growth for them.

Putting all those components together is what gives a competitive advantage to Bison Transport. It pushes us far and above not only the competition in Canada, but in all of North America — in making us the premier carrier.

JR: Bison has won a lot of awards — safety awards, specifically. When you are looking for a new place to work, is that something you take a look at?

CT: Clearly, that’s important. Looking at the official website is great, but really its understanding what the conversations are behind the scenes not only with customers but with the motoring public. It’s taking a look at the safety awards and never taking that for granted, but really building from that and building a new legacy. And the culture, too, and that’s really what’s key here: The culture is consistent across operations, technicians, drivers — all through the organization.

JR: What’s the most “foreign” — and foreign in quotation marks — Canadian thing that you have ran into so far living in Canada?

CT: The diversity of the people. The culmination of different cultures, languages, backgrounds, different beliefs all coming together. And I came from a diverse background in the United States; here it’s that to the next level.