Southland shows that trades have changed

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on August 23, 2024.

Herald photo by Al Beeber Orville Eby of the Batter Boys flips pancakes Thursday morning at Southland Trailers seventh annual Whoop-Up Days breakfast.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

The owners of Southland Trailers consider the people who work at the company’s six plants in Lethbridge and County of Lethbridge as team members.

Those 550 valuable men and women were among the throngs lining up for the seventh annual Whoop-Up Days pancake breakfast staged by Southland on Thursday morning for four hours.

All donations from the event, which had dozens packing chairs and tables shortly after the breakfast started, were going to the Lethbridge Therapeutic Riding Association.

The breakfast had fun for the whole family with a petting zoo, bouncy castle and face painting for kids and for the adults live entertainment by the Tom Price Band which includes drummer Matt Lepinski and bassist/singer Roy Bartz. Breakfast was cooked by the Calgary-based Batter Boys.

Scott Sailer, who along with his brothers Ryan and Jason, runs the family business believes in supporting the community and the breakfast is one way to show it.

Lethbridge-based Southland is the largest trailer manufacturing company in Canada with two plants in the city and four in the County of Lethbridge.

The company builds a wide range of product including flatbed and cargo trailers, as well as goosenecks, car haulers, toy haulers, dump trailers, gravel trailers and gravel boxes.

The company has gotten strong support from the city and County and it wants to continue growing and creating jobs, Scott Sailer said early Thursday morning.

“We want to keep growing, we want to keep bringing on more jobs with the trades and apprenticeship programs that we offer. There’s a lot happening,” said Sailer.

Southland has been active with Lethbridge Polytechnic, sending tradesmen and tradeswomen through programs there and it’s looking at projects with high schools to show younger people that the trades aren’t “a dirty old job anymore,” said Sailer.

The trades have changed over the years, he said.

Trades “have advanced a long way.”

Students who check out Southland can see what kind of trades are now offered.

“It’s different now, it’s not coveralls and black and dirty. It’s a new world in the manufacturing industry.”

Sailer said there are roughly 10 to 15 different types of opportunities available at Southland for people in the trades.

“You can be an electrician or a plumber, HVAC, welder, painter and then you go into the office into graphic designers, finance side of things, accounting.”

Southland, for example, has 12 engineers on staff designing product and examining what new advancements the company can bring in and then there is also the processing side with the cutting, bending and forming of steel.

“We do it all in-house. Anything that we can bring locally in-house is much better for us.”

The breakfast gets strong support from the public and other businesses including Flaman Trailers which is Southland’s main dealer and Banditos, which supplies all the welding gas. The Fitness Club fitness centre was also on hand Thursday morning with a booth.

Sailer says the LTRA has been good to Southland and “the money seems to go a long way when given to them. They do nothing but good things for the kids and the commmunity.” He expected between 1,000 and 1,500 people to be served on Thursday.