That’s a lotto truck!

PRINCE GEORGE. B.C. — If you sign up for a truck-driving licence course at Fox Pro driver-training school, you will get a very serious crack at winning a free and very sleek brand new fully loaded Peterbilt 388.

Your chances of winning the rig are one in 500. Not bad, by any contest standards.

“Imagine getting a brand new truck, completely paid off, as soon as you get your licence,” exclaimed Don Bailey, the brains behind the truck lottery. “That’s $3,200 a month in your pocket right away that would otherwise be going to truck payments.”

A word of explanation’s in order. For the past two years, Bailey has been growing his truck school, Fox Pro Transportation Solutions Inc., which is based in Prince George but with outlets in four other communities.

He’s a big advocate of attracting new talent to driving and has already established his own version of an apprenticeship program whereby his students work for four weeks with a local company before graduating from the course. Then, after they graduate, the company will pay the newbie with wages subsidized by the school.

Bailey said he’s had plenty of buy-in from local haulers who like the idea of trying out the recent grads before putting them behind the wheels of their trucks full time, at full pay. But this latest thing — the truck lottery — is Bailey’s new stab at luring talent. He thinks he will attract new students to the industry by promising them a chance at winning a free truck.

He started the raffle project in June. And he will draw the winning ticket as soon as 500 students have registered truck training. The winner will drive away with a new licence and new truck and Bailey will start all over again, and when he has another 500 students, he’ll draw for another new truck.

Bailey, a former Canadian Freightways driver and dispatcher, has reason to be optimistic. He’s been in business only since 2005 and has already graduated more than 500 students; and he offers about seven different truck driving courses, ranging in price from $4,100 to $16,000.

The price varies depending on what kind of background the student brings to the courses and what qualifications he graduates with. He started the lottery in the summer and he’s already up to 54 new enrollees.

“We have to make the profession sexy and exciting to attract drivers, and this is one way to do it,” Bailey told TodaysTrucking.com.