SUDBURY, Ont. — Jim Riddle, maintenance manager extraordinaire, holds what might well be the number-one most-appropriate ideal qualification for overseeing about 75 staffers ranging from young apprentices to veteran wrench-wielders.

And that is? Both his parents were high school teachers.

Who knows more about keeping the reins on energetic young folks than school teachers?

For the past eight years, Riddle, 63, has been in charge of maintenance at Sudbury-based Day Group, a 55-year-old family operation that evolved from a one-truck operation to where it now operates about 800 pieces of transportation equipment, including a few helicopters.

"I take care of everything except the helicopters,” Riddle told todaystrucking.com. "Thankfully, they’re run as a separate division, Day Aviation."

Recently, Riddle was named the 2010 Volvo Maintenance Manager of the Year at the annual Canadian Fleet Maintenance Seminar (CFMS).

Riddle was born and raised in Sudbury and after "going through high school without ever opening a book." He went to work at INCO and there became enthralled by the transportation business. 

Day Group’s maintenance coordinator Louise
Cloutier (right) says Riddle’s friends call him
“Big Man.” It’s not hard to figure out why.

His background is as colorful as he is candid.

Before joining Day in 2002, Riddle worked variously in towing; gas-retailing, truck repair and sales; and heavy-equipment leasing.

All the while Riddle has been a keenly active member of ATSSA as well as involved with Sudbury’s community training centre, Cambrian College, from which he draws a steady stream of apprentices for the Day Group.

He has trucks in his fleet that are brand new and he also knows how to wring the last drop of profitability out of older iron.

“We’ve got stuff as old as 1985 working every day. I have more trouble with some of my new trucks than I do with my old ones. Some people would look at what we do here with our trucks and they’d think it’s not viable. But we do things like take a dump truck and make it a water truck.

“It’s not cheap but it’s worth it.”

Ask him what sort of trucks he runs? “Name it, and we’ve got two of them.”

Or his philosophy on drivers: “A happy driver is a safe driver. And if a driver looks after his truck and shows he cares, he’ll get boot brushes and CD players and that kind of thing. We’ve even put new aluminum rims if the driver is happier that way.”

Riddle’s eager to try new gear, but he’s also very particular. “We’re not averse to trying new technology, but you have to know how the electronic age talks to the gearbox. There always seems to be problems with the links.”

Riddle is a familiar face around the CFMS and he’s an active industry participant.

In her letter of support for his nomination, the maintenance coordinator for the Day Group Louise Cloutier summed up her colleague thusly: “I have never met a person who knows heavy-duty trucking like Jim. This man has a passion for this industry like no other.”