The founder/inventor of the "Convertible Trailer" and the CEO of CTM WW, Bill Pawluk, started this project in 1996. Running his own fleet of 20 trucks and delivering continuous loads to the US from Canada, he noticed that the percentage of empty miles was very high, approximately 37%.
Although these truck runs earned acceptable levels of revenue in the beginning, the market became more competitive as time went by. This forced all of the transportation companies competing for this business to come up with creative ways to maintain profitability and find a way to fill those empty miles (on the back haul). Thus came about the "Convertible Trailer" concept.
After experimenting with modifications to existing auto carrier equipment, and after seven months of design work, the production drawings of the first "Convertible Trailer" were ready. The manufacturing was completed shortly afterward and the first trailer was on the road by the latter part of 1999.
It was immediately apparent that the concept was valid as the first trailer never experienced an empty run once the proper freight was sourced for each respective route. CTM WW immediately went on to build the second generation of Convertible Trailers while evolving its design to further improve safety, functionalities, usability and efficiency. The subsequent generation was improved even further to include additional hydraulic functions reducing manual operations. Today, the equipment is fully hydraulic with minimum manual functions and can be utilized much like any commercial conventional auto carrier on the road today.
CTM WW continued to haul vehicles into the US and was able to successfully transport over 5000 loads and logged over 5,000,000 km on the "Convertible Trailer" units. As a result of using these trailers, the percentage of empty miles was reduced from 37% to 2% within one year. This immediately translated to more than $7,000 of additional revenue realized Per Truck, Per Month!
Over time, based on the successful design and since there was such strong interest from other companies, CTM WW applied to patent the concept of "convertibility" worldwide.
The Leaders Awards are presented to individuals who have demonstrated excellence in their field and have grasped the wider concepts of the industry and have brought significant innovation to their company.
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