War and poor crops have cut jobs and production for a prairie manufacturing company dependent on American trade.
Doepker Industries of Annaheim, Sask., laid off a third of its 360 staff this spring. Many of the remaining 225 have agreed to job sharing to prevent deeper cuts.
Company president Dave Doepker said the war in Iraq and the effects of trade disputes have forced the Saskatchewan company to reduce production to one shift a day from two.
Doepker builds grain and flat-deck trailers for the highway trucking industry.
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“Our trailers are in the business of carrying on that huge trade that Canada and the U.S. share. When that is off, then we are hit pretty hard. It’s just that it’s never been off like this before,” he said.
Problems started with last year’s drought, which slowed the farm economy. Rising fuel prices caused by the possibility of war in Iraq hurt trucking companies’ ability to buy new equipment.
Doepker said the war has meant less and more costly business for trailer buyers, which has reduced sales for his company.
“For a lot of reasons I hope this war is nearly over. That may provide some stability to the economy and maybe some lower fuel prices.”
The company has grown rapidly in the past 10 years, building new plants in Moose Jaw and Humboldt, Sask. Half of its employees are younger than 30.
“We don’t want to lose any of these people. They are young and able to relocate and they take their skills with them and are really hard to replace,” Doepker said.
“It has always been difficult to attract young people to rural communities. Once you have a great workforce, making cuts is doubly hard because things will turn around and you need them back.”
In the days when the company was smaller, it often relied on farmers for winter production, but “today we only have a few of those folks left. It is a modern company with a year-round workforce.”
