MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — If you look closely at the Dionisio (Dennis) Di Franco’s little handheld calculator, you’ll see that several of the digits are so worn down from daily punching that the numbers are almost invisible.

"This," says a smiling Di Franco, pointing to the in-need-of-a-retread keypad, "is the most trustworthy person here. It never lies, and there’s no politics." He has a thing about accuracy in numbers.

Di Franco has been fixing, building and customizing trailers for 59 years. He now oversees the Peel Truck & Trailer Equipment empire, which in addition to the 40-bay repair and customizing shop based in Mississauga, includes Innovative Trailer Design Industries (ITD), Innovative Chassis and Container Design Industries (ICD), and finally, Innovative Trailer Design of America, (ITDA), based in Annapolis, Maryland. 

Even though he’s handed over the administrative reins to others, including his son Benny, you’ll still find Dennis out in the shop, in coveralls, inspecting the handiwork of his army of welders, machinists, body experts and technicians. And robots.

Box Office: 70 secs is how long it takes an
average ITD unit to morph into an office or workshop.

He may have arrived from Southern Italy with barely more than a grade-four education and a knack for fixing things six decades ago, but there’s nothing old-world about his present-day operation.

In fact, in shockingly marked contrast to so many companies in the country, Peel has the hammer down. As his son Benny (the President and Design Engineer) puts it, "this down-market is the time for expansion."

For starters, they’re transforming the Mississauga factory to accommodate their new chassis-building robots. The goal: Be ready to increase their trailer production when the market returns as well as meet the expected demand for long-combination vehicles at the same time as they compete with offshore manufacturers.

"The only advantage the Chinese have over us is labor costs and nobody in China is trying to manufacture chassis with robots," says ICD Vice President Jimmy Zbrowosky.

Most recently, he and his team have been treating American military officials to sneak previews of what has to be the Di Franco family’s wild card — the mobile expanding trailer.

You have to see this thing to believe it.

The heart of the technology is a 53-ft trailer that transforms within mere minutes into a 1,200-sq.ft. facility, complete with power, heating, a/c, satellite communications and/or internet access — basically anything you’d need to run an office, small school, hospital, casino, airport, training facility or — because the units can be quickly subdivided into little rooms — any kind of operation you might imagine.

Sony uses ITD units to create rolling arcades

The basic unit expands seven feet out on each side and the open or closed trailers remain within one-eighth-of-an-inch variance. And it takes, literally, one minute and 10 seconds to completely open the trailer to its full institutional size.

It’s self-powered and easily transportable. And yes, it’s much like one of those toy transformers that they just made a movie about.

Benny Di Franco, who learned his craft from his father, invented the expandable unit in 2002, in response to an appeal from the Grasslands School Division school board in Brooks, Alta., which was looking for a mobile shop class.

Cigar Lake, in the far northern reaches Saskatchewan, is the home of one of the biggest uranium finds on the continent. There, the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Mining and Technology employed a Di Franco trailer to train local mining technicians so they wouldn’t have to go far from home to learn the skills they need to work in the local mine.

Or maybe you’ve seen one of Budweiser’s three Big-Rig Barbeque trailers at a local fair, or a Sony PlayStation promotional vehicle. They’re ITD products.

If you haven’t seen a Di Franco trailer, you eventually will.

As Benny says, "When everybody else is shutting down, the Di Francos are growing strong."