A highly skilled team of 40 to 60 workers is expected to be among the first employees to build rail cars at a new manufacturing company setting up shop in Wilmington, the company’s leader said Wednesday.
 
They’ll be a “strike force,” said Vertex Rail Technologies CEO Don Croteau, that will build two sample rail cars needed for federal certification before Vertex, which plans to employ more than 1,300 in the next several months, can begin filling orders.
 
Before an audience of more than 600 at the Wilmington Convention Center, Croteau, keynote speaker at the WilmingtonBiz Conference & Expo luncheon on Wednesday afternoon, answered questions about his own background in business, the new company and Vertex Rail’s progress toward producing the sample rail cars between now and May.
 
“If all goes well . . . we will become certified and from that moment on, then the hiring ramp-up begins and we start building cars,” Croteau said.
 
The company has been refitting the former Terex Crane plant at 202 Raleigh St., off Carolina Beach Road in Wilmington, after expecting to invest up to $60 million in the facility as a step toward projected revenues in the coming years of more than $600 million. Those revenues stem from the high price tag for new rail cars and the expected increase in demand for new cars as older cars age out of the marketplace.
 
In addition to the sample cars, the facility itself at 202 Raleigh St. also has to pass federally required tests that are rail industry standards.
 
“It is inherently an extremely safe industry. They’re very careful about who they let in to do this work and they’re very careful about who does the work and who controls the work,” Croteau said as he answered questions posed on stage by Vicky Janowski, editor of the Greater Wilmington Business Journal, which produced Wednesday's expo and conference.
 
In November, Gov. Pat McCrory traveled to Wilmington to announce the coming of Vertex Rail, which marked in essence the return of the railroad industry, GWBJ publisher Rob Kaiser said as he introduced Croteau to a community that keenly felt the loss of the Atlantic Coastline Railroad's move to Florida in the 1960s.
 
The company behind the city’s newest rail industry expects to be successful based on market indications, Croteau said Wednesday.
 
“The customers are very interested in us. We’ve quoted almost 40,000 cars in the last six to nine months, which is a stunning amount of work,” he said. “So the market needs us.”
 
“What’s Vertex’s commitment to creating good middle class jobs as opposed to high wage upper management and then a bunch of minimum wage lineworkers?”
 
More than 1,000 of the jobs Vertex is creating are for “regular, everyday shop people,” Croteau responded, who will need or be trained to have specific skill sets, and the company’s average wage has been estimated at $40,000 a year.
 
“I think that when you talk about 1,000 everyday, regular jobs, everyday, regular people, I think that speaks to what we’re going to try to for the middle class and for the community,” Croteau said. “Our wages are not cheap on purpose. We didn’t come to Wilmington to find low cost help…our job was to come here, be successful and make the community successful as well.”
 
More than 6,000 people have applied for jobs at Vertex, with a handful hired so far. Issues involving the release of new federal regulations governing the manufacturing of rail cars, expected in the next six to seven weeks, have led to some delay, but in the coming months if those regulations are released as expected and demand continues as predicted, Croteau said, the company will likely “have more business, frankly, than we know what to do with.”  
 
Croteau’s own work history followed a non-traditional path. In a way, he said, his beginnings as a business leader began with a decision he made in middle school, choosing to learn French over taking a woodshop class. That choice eventually led Croteau to a job with Alcatel Vacuum Products.
 
“I thought I’d never use the language ever,” Croteau said. “When I was 19 years old, I was working for a grocery store chain and I didn’t like the job. I was mad at the world; I had a lot of issues at the time I was working through and I applied for a job out of the newspaper for a [French] company called Alcatel. . . .
 
“They gave me a letter written in French . . . and said, can you read this . . . I could read about 60 percent of the letter and they hired me.”
 
When he was growing up, he lived in poverty with his siblings, his family relying on welfare and the help of others to survive, and Croteau said his background has given him his ambition, along with a desire to help others find their drive.
 
“I never think I’ve made it. I never think I’ve been successful, because I’ve had plenty of failures in my life,” Croteau said. “I think that pushes and motivates me to keep doing, and working, and pushing."