How does the relationship with the automobile industry help?

Linamar is a very lean and nimble company, there's not a huge heavy hierarchy in the business and Linamar has done a good job of learning and implementing lean manufacturing techniques and a quality operating system that are similar to that which the best American automakers use. We will continue to adapt and improve our use of those tools and techniques and I believe that as we get to the point where people are re-fleeting and growing at the same time, it's going to put us in a much better position than some of our competitors at re-assembling our old supply chain and ensuring that we're going to be in a place to meet the demand.

Maybe one of the things that attracted Linamar to you was your knowledge of the rental customer point of view?

I think so. They clearly weren't attracted to me for my manufacturing experience. On the other hand, when I hired rental sales people, I have often hired people that never rented a piece of equipment in their life and the reason for it is you got smart motivated men and women, you are in a better position to mold them the way that you want. Linamar does have a particular way of manufacturing. Linamar has a quality system; we have a global operating system for the company. I'm not coming to the company with any pre-conceived ideas about the way to manufacture something.

But on the other hand, I do have an idea of what customers expect from a manufacturer. The other thing that I have to offer, I could be wrong about this, but I don't think there is anybody else in the aerial industry, particularly in the rental side that has operated at the senior level that I have in both North America and Europe. So I have an understanding of the company's two key markets today. I expect that was probably another advantage in their eyes.

Skyjack however is gearing up for international growth, is it not?

We are expanding. We got our business license to operate in China so we have a business plan for our sales and service operation in China. It will initially be based in Wuxi where Linamar has manufacturing facilities. And that's part of our company strategy where possible when we open up a new facility of any kind, we like to co-locate with other company facilities.

We have people on the ground there now anyway, but we will be bringing product into China fairly soon and we will have people there to support it. We expect to also be in South America and Australia before the year is over. But even after we're established there, the fact is that our core market for a couple of years will continue to be North America and Europe.

What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of Skyjack in terms of distribution, and of products?

The strengths are the quality of the products that we build today. We build machines that we believe, and I know some of the products have been compared for this versus our competitors, we believe we make products with the lowest total life cost generally available in the market today. We believe that's why people buy from us. If you were going to go and do a survey of 100 aerial lift mechanics in the United States and ask them which machines they find are the easiest to service and maintain, I'll be shocked if Skyjack doesn't place very highly in that survey because I know from mechanics that have worked for me in the past, that the general perception, you go work on a Skyjack, they all work the same way. You work on one Skyjack, you understand basically how the other ones would work.

Southwest Airlines is so successful for the same reason. Any Southwest Airlines pilot can step into any plane and they can fly it whether or not they've ever been in it before. Because every single plane they have in their fleet, they buy Boeing 737s, unless it's changed in the last couple of years, but that was their business model. They might be different series, but they all look alike, and they fly the same way.

So first it's products. Second is the company culture. We do describe ourselves as a company that cares. Some people might think it's cheesy but we do care about the customers and I believe that our customers appreciate that. I also believe that we have excellent customers. People that buy from us buy because they get it. They understand what Skyjack is about and they understand what they're getting from us.

If we have weaknesses at the moment, I think really the only big weakness is that as a company that is striving to be one of the top three aerial manufacturers in the world, we do have holes, particularly in our boom line. We don't have an articulated boom in the 60-foot range and we don't have any booms in the 80-foot range and above. It may not be a big part of the overall unit sales but the fact that we don't have it has probably prevented us from becoming some customers' or prospective customers' No. 1 or No. 2 supplier of choice. We do know that some people that have got dual supply chains that we probably have been excluded from being their No. 1 or 2. Nevertheless in spite of their policies, a lot of those people will still come to us and buy our scissors and some of our boom models and now our telehandlers because they really like the product quality.

Are you trying to fill those holes?

We are. We have a plan both for new products and for re-design of some of our existing ones that takes us right up to 2016 and 2017. And when we renew the plan next year, we'll probably extend that. We will probably always have a rolling 6- to 7-year development plan. But one of the things that I want to try to do is to see what we can do to compress the timeline on certain critical models.

Were there any surprises or unexpected first impressions when you started at Skyjack?

I would say nothing negative. The only surprises really have been pretty pleasant ones. I've known some of the people in the company since I first started dealing with them. I've known Dave Stewart since 1992 and there are a couple of other people at the company I've known almost as long. On the positive side my reception has been very good at the company. The other thing I've been pleasantly surprised about is that in spite of the difficulties the employees that remain with the company have gone through, that morale is very high and people are very positive about Skyjack. They like working for Skyjack, they like being part of Linamar and I guess the only other thing I would add to that is as I learn more about Linamar and its capabilities, maybe that has been the biggest and best surprise of all because I realize that it's kind of the ace up my sleeve. It puts me in a much better position than I might have realized two or three months ago to really do the things with Skyjack that we want to. Skyjack was one of the better performing companies in the group for a number of years, which is hardly surprising given how strong the equipment manufacturing business was in the middle part of this decade.

Those are all the good things. I can honestly say there hasn't been a negative thing. I never worked in Canada before, I visited Canada sometimes for business and to go skiing, but I hardly come across anybody whether it's going in to get my Canadian SI number and dealing with the official bureaucracy to going and getting a bank account set up, everybody that I encounter, whether they are co-workers or people in officialdom or immigration, there is something to be said about the culture in Canada that's very positive. So I am looking forward to living there.