From Earthworms to Trucks
John Reynolds' diverse background includes a Ph.D. from UT
For a mom and pop trucking company getting up close and personal with drivers is easy. For Schneider National, the largest truckload carrier in North America, with 16,000 drivers, it’s more difficult - but not impossible.
Just ask Service Team Leader John Reynolds, who works out of a Schneider National Operating Center in Guelph, Ontario, where the word personal means something.
“On the one hand I am an advocate for the drivers, and on the other hand I am a management person for the company . . . that is my job in a nutshell,” says John.
John Reynolds (’73 ecology) is one of the world's few earthworm experts, thanks in part to his studies at UT.
“If I can keep the drivers profitable and legal within all the confines that are placed upon them today so that they can maximize their earnings and the company can do the same, then it’s all good . . . that is a real simplistic explanation,” he adds.
John is accountable for coaching/mentoring approximately 45 drivers.
If anyone is up to the challenge of this position it is John, who at the young age of 64 brings a unique perspective and a wealth of talent to the role.
Joining Schneider National in 1997, this is John’s 9th career in what can best be described as an impressive work history. He has done everything from working as a silversmith to becoming one of a very select few earthworm experts in the world.
Offering an explanation for this somewhat unusual choice, he says laughing, “I never really planned to be an earthworm specialist. It just sort of happened. While on a sabbatical at Purdue University I was asked by a well known scientist from England to classify everything I found in some soil samples, and that included earthworms. When I pointed out that here in North America we have a lot of different families of earthworms, he told me to explain it all to the laboratory and the next thing you know, I was getting letters and samples from all over the place wanting to get them identified.”
He has written and published over 200 books and papers on a number of scientific issues, “most of which are fairly technical.”
John did not get to this level of achievement without a lot of hard work. His education is extensive. He graduated post secondary five times with: a bachelor of science in pre-med, majoring in biology, agriculture and chemistry from Wilmington, Ohio; a master’s in entomology (study of insects), genetics and plant breeding from Purdue in Lafayette, Indiana; a doctorate in ecology, soil science and systematic zoology from the University of Tennessee; and a post doctorate in acarology (ticks and mites) from Ohio State.
Besides his work as a scientist he also studied law.
As a law graduate, he found himself attending the Atlantic Police Academy in Charlottetown, PEI. After graduating he worked for the Fredericton City Police, five years as a constable and five as an inspector. It is those years spent in police work, he says, that help him in his role at Schneider National.
My job here reminds me a lot of when I was an inspector and investigated citizen complaints against the police. I had the police force on the one hand and the community on the other, and it was my job to resolve problems that arose between the two,” he says.
Seeking new challenges soon became a way of life for John. His next job was chair of resource technology in Lindsay, Ontario, at the Frost Campus of Sir Sanford Fleming College. “Then the government changed when (Mike) Harris took over and many administrative positions were abolished in the education field including mine,” says John.
His next career move, it seems, would land him right in the driver’s seat of a big rig. Unwilling to sit idle, he had gone into consulting and while writing a new curriculum for the Justice Institute at the Police Academy in Prince Edward Island, he responded to an ad and the next thing he knew he was attending a truck driving school.
“I know this sounds strange, but I found the practical training to get the A-Z license the most difficult for me. The book part which usually gives most people the trouble was easy, but when you are driving you have to use all your senses, both arms, both legs, everything, all at the same time and I found it tough. I soon learned what drivers have to deal with and that doesn’t even include the traffic and other pressures,” he adds.
But John persevered and before long he was hired on as a driver at Schneider National.
“Truck driving is honest work and it pays well and sometimes you have to be practical. I might have a unique scientific background that most people don’t have, but if people don’t create jobs to use that sort of expertise, then what are you going to do? I have a wife and three daughters to look after,” he says pragmatically.
So just how does a scientist like working as a service team leader at Schneider National?
“I guess you could say I enjoy a good challenge,” he says grinning.
“I do everything from looking after a driver going to citizenship court, to arranging time for the driver to stay at home to recuperate after an operation, to helping with administrative duties such as benefits packages, to keeping track of their physicals, to assisting with driver’s license renewals and more . . . whatever it takes to keep things running smoothly.”