A company is setting up a new operation in Hay River and it is looking for employees to help them do that.

Cando Rail Services plans to hire five or six people to provide services to Imperial Oil, which brings fuel to Hay River via CN.

The company will be moving railcars for offloading.

"In this case, we're only going to be moving back and forth between the CN yard and Imperial Oil," explained Mark Jackson, Cando Rail Services' Edmonton-based assistant general manager for B.C. and Alberta. "CN will still come up to the yard. They'll still drop the cars off there. We'll simply collect the cars and service Imperial Oil with the product that CN provides us."

Those moves will be made with a Trackmobile.

"It is a piece of rail equipment that has both the ability to drive on the road and drive on the tracks," said Jackson, adding it can hook onto railcars and move them.

"Imperial Oil requires a little bit more service than CN is able to provide, and as a result gives us the opportunity to come in and work very closely with both CN and with Imperial Oil," said Jackson.

Cando Rail Services is looking to start operations by the beginning of April.

"We actually plan on shipping equipment up there and having equipment starting to arrive for inspection and preparation the last week in March," Jackson said.

There is no CN crew base in Hay River, meaning railcars are moved at the yard by workers from High Level, Alta.

Jackson and two human resources people from Cando Rail Services will be in Hay River for a career fair on Feb. 21 and Feb. 22 at Soaring Eagle Friendship Centre.

"Our preference is always to hire local, to use local, to service local and to buy local," said Jackson. "We'll train all of our people to be able to run the Trackmobiles, along with doing the switching on the ground like a conductor would."

The Cando Rail Services official said it would be good to find people with experience.

"But if they don't have experience, we'll spend the time to get them trained up to do the job properly," he said, adding any type of industrial work in the past by potential employees would be a positive. "It gives us an idea that the person has the aptitude to be able to deal with heavy equipment, but it's not an absolute requirement."

If the company can't find local people for the work, it will have to go elsewhere to get them, Jackson noted. "But our first choice is to hire local."

Cando Rail Services, which is headquartered in Brandon, Man., has been in business for about 40 years.

Jackson said the company is into all sorts of rail-related operations, including track work, transloading services, industrial sites and railcar storage facilities.

"It's really diversified," he said. "It's an interesting company. It is an employee-owned company. It's not a publically-traded company."

In Ontario, it is the rail service provider for both Toyota automotive plants, and it provides rail service for three major potash mines in Saskatchewan.

It even owns short rail lines in Winnipeg and southern Ontario.