My name is Vaughn Hatcher. I'm the national recruiting manager for Day and Ross Transport. With me is Crystal DeLong, who is our recruiter for Atlantic Canada, and Dave Tisdale, who is a broker with Day and Ross Transportation as the owner of Dave Tisdale Trucking.
I would just like to do a quick introduction of Day and Ross. We're based in Hartland, New Brunswick, and we have been in business for 65 years. We have grown from one truck to a fleet of over 3,800 trucks. Part of the success of Day and Ross has been in the hiring of foreign workers or foreign drivers. Our industry is one of the largest employers in Atlantic Canada. We are in a growth industry that has good-paying jobs for drivers. We need to fill some positions with foreign workers. We've been one of the best-managed companies for, I believe, eight years straight running.
As I said, we're growing. We have at least an extra 2,000 loads a year that we will be needing to haul to the U.S. out of Atlantic Canada. We have some fantastic foreign workers who are with us right now. We are taking part in the Atlantic immigration pilot project through brokers like Dave, who has, I believe, the first driver to be hired through this program. Dave will be able to speak to the challenges he's faced with hiring foreign workers.
From a general standpoint, from talking to colleagues and from my experiences with this, our biggest challenges are the uncertainty of cost for our brokers to hire drivers and the amount of time it takes for a driver to go through the process to be accepted for the Atlantic immigration pilot project.
Another challenge we have is that I have some brokers who are based in Ontario who would like to place some jobs in New Brunswick, but they are being excluded from this pilot project because they haven't been in business in New Brunswick for two years. I would hope that you could change your mind on that or revisit it if a job is going to be placed in the Atlantic provinces and not moved after that point.
I'll now open the floor to either Dave or Crystal. Crystal has been my go-to person in Atlantic Canada, helping our brokers process the applications for the pilot project. She may be able to speak to some of the challenges she's had.