At the very early age of eight or nine years old Suzanne Blanchette became attracted to trucks and heavy equipment. Her father was, at the time, involved in the logging and heavy equipment industry in the Sturgeon Falls area. The self-confessed tomboy of a family of 12 says when she was a little girl she was "always trying to run away from the dishes so I was always trying to follow my dad; I was just fascinated. I threw out the dolls and got into heavy equipment."
Today, Blanchette partly owns and manages Transportation Training Specialists, a Sault. St. Marie-based private vocational school that to date has trained over 500 students to operate tractor-trailers and heavy equipment.
In 1989 Blanchette, who had already been driving a transport truck for 10 years, was in a truck stop talking with another driver whose company was looking for someone to teach new drivers. Although she had no teaching experience, she offered to help the men acquire their truck licenses. To her surprise all the men passed their transport driver exams, and a new career for Blanchette was born.
She says she was "fascinated that she can actually pass on her knowledge to someone else and liked (teaching)."
Recognizing that there was no one else providing this service she began her business from her home with some start-up funding from the Ontario Metis Aboriginal Association. She acknowledges that, at the onset, it was challenging for a woman attempting to teach mostly men how to drive transport trucks. She says that she quickly realized that "like anything else you could tell when a person knows what they are talking about," and Blanchette was confident she did.
In May of 2001 the business expanded to offer courses in heavy equipment operation for the construction industry. She provides training on new leased equipment. The company purchased 100 acres of property for a training site. The training is designed to prepare the student for the safe and efficient operation of the machine on a typical construction project. Ninety per cent of the training is practical training in the field, while 10 per cent of the training is conducted in their new classroom facilities in the Paul Mall in Sault. St. Marie. The school also offers courses in health and safety, such as CPR. Chief instructor Ward Black, and four certified instructors, deliver the programs for the school. Blanchette's primary role now is the monitoring and evaluation of programs and the monitoring the progress of students to ensure that her high standards are met.
"When a guy comes in our program we always give him more than we say we're going to give them, so we make sure that they are ready." Blanchette says, "I've always gone beyond the call of duty when training,"
