A boom in the oil and gas industry has one Penticton business scrambling to hire new employees.
McCoy Trailers, its divisions and subsidiaries are in need of around 40 people to help them continue growing, providing mobile solutions to the global energy industry, forestry, construction and heavy haul markets.
“We have had a nice rebound in our markets and we are trying to grow to meet our customer demand, so we have hired quite a few people to date but we are still looking to flesh out our shifts,” said Andy McEachern, vice-president of McCoy Trailers.
On Saturday, McCoy is hosting a job fair at the Kelowna Conference Centre in the Holiday Inn Express from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. There are 30 positions alone for welders, and McCoy is also looking for manufacturing engineers, mechanical engineers, painters and more.
McEachern previously worked as the engineering manager and general manager for Peerless Ltd. As vice-president, he oversees the operation of the entire trailer manufacturing division of McCoy, including head office operations in Penticton and engineering and sales offices located in Edmonton, Calgary and Penticton. McEachern successfully restructured a once low-performing manufacturing division into one of the top-performing manufacturing organizations operating today.
The vice-president said through enterprise resource planning software tied into different modules of how they run their business and the use of bar code scanning to improve efficiencies, they have created a lean manufacturing structure. McEachern helped introduce labour policies, new cost structure, sustainable technologies and strategic growth — which has won McCoy awards and recognition throughout B.C. and Alberta.
Originally starting out as Page and Page in 1944 and then being bought by Peerless, they expanded their Penticton facility in 1973 dealing mostly within the Western Canada resource sector. Now they are moving units not only in Western Canada but in Texas, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Wyoming, Australia, China, Russia, the Middle East and North Africa.
“Right now we are in a real growth mode. We are really seeing a surge in the oil and gas side of the business, so the oil field transportation trailers and drilling and well servicing trailers are really doing well for us,” said McEachern.
Situated on a 10-acre site off Dartmouth Road in Penticton, they build products used worldwide and employ around 200 people locally.
“Penticton is a nice place to live and we have a good ability to attract employees because it is a wonderful area and town to be in. The quality of life is great and very attractive for people. We have a lot of history in this business and employees that have been with us for 35 to 40 years,” said McEachern.
On McCoy’s wish list of new hires for Penticton is engineers.
“Our value proposition for our trailers is highly engineered equipment and customer service, and really the root of that is engineering. Building a quality product is certainly up there, but having an engineered solution that says we are going to be better than our competitors, that’s our value proposition and we really want to build on that. We have 11 engineers here now, but we need to grow that,” said McEachern.
McCoy is also building manufacturing facilities in Texas and Arkansas to help build the southern market.
For more information on McCoy Trailers visit www.mccoyglobal.com.
