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.

Take this example: insurance companies were in ‘picky’ mode at the time and most fleets were sitting back and waiting to take the premium hit. Einwechter turned that around 180 degrees. He assembled a portfolio of his small company’s accomplishments- using everything from safety records to press clippings-and went on the attack. He took that portfolio to the insurance industry and offered his business to those who might want to insure a solid carrier. It worked.
In the intervening years Einwechter has expanded a lot, and Challenger now sits at number six on the Today’s Trucking Top 100 list. He’s turned one truck in 1975 into 1200 30 years later, not to mention 3100 trailers, and he continues to have a sizeable influence on the industry as one of its more outspoken leaders.
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. When we visited in early 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-sq-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.
There’s a full-length pit under each of those lanes and-uniquely-a common mechanic’s station below grade between pits. About 10 x 12 ft in size, it houses the requisite computer but also 20 or so of the most commonly needed routine-maintenance parts like brake diaphragms. They can be billed right from there without the mechanic ever coming up. As time savers go, this one should be big.
The driver, not incidentally, never leaves his truck, using the time to complete his paperwork.
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.
This building and the safety-inspection shop are heated by waste oil via CleanBurn furnaces, and with a holding capacity of 80,000 litres nobody’s going cold any time soon. Just in case, there’s a natural gas backup.
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.
The system cost $600,000, says Moser, but the payback is an impressive four years-a period that shrinks every time the cost of electricity or gas rises. The geothermal system eliminates the need for fossil fuels. 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.
Being innovative and being first is something of a habit for Challenger. In 1994, for instance, it was the first carrier under the new NAFTA agreement to receive authority for Mexico, thus offering transportation services across the entire continent. And last month, continuing its long tradition of testing new technologies, the company took delivery of five Volvo VN tractors sporting Cummins ISX engines that run on liquefied natural gas. Developed by the engine maker and its partner, Vancouver’s Westport Innovations, they’ll run between Toronto and Michigan.
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. Or simply to envy.