Integration, environment and innovation in road transport

Main Forte, created in 1995, is a back-to-work regional goods transport agency in the Nord-Pas de Calais area, which employs and trains long-term jobless persons whose professional project is to become truck drivers. It first worked in the Lens-Liévin job basin, as part of the Récup'Tri workforce development workshop, where it discovered the economic and social importance of development in the transport sector: a skills enhancing and empowering trade, which guarantees a job when the training is finished.

After many years of operation and unqualified success, the concept was duplicated in a company in the Lille Metropolitan job basin: Société Lilloise d'Insertion par le Transport. The two entities merged in June 2011. Today, Main Forte hires more than 35 drivers on a back-to-work basis and eight full-time staff in two branches (Loison-sous-Lens and Marquette). The company has 24 trucks and generates an annual revenue of 2.5 million euros.

An innovative system for drivers even better prepared for the job

Main Forte has set the objective of better structuring and professionalizing the training and integration scheme that it proposes by investing in an onboard IT system (SIE-Système d'Informatique Embarquée). This tool meets the need to enhance the drivers' skills through self-training while improving safety by learning eco-driving and by evaluating their technical skills more objectively. A genuine company project mobilizing all the employees of Main Forte, the SIE advances the full-time staff, as well as the back-to-work drivers, from a crafts culture to more professional (in terms of integration) and digital practice. Among the benefits that they can expect: the use of a tool that they will increasingly rediscover at their future employers and the incentive to eco-driving. This rational driving leads to lower fuel consumption and better safety. It is increasingly required by carriers and clients. For Main Forte, added to these primarily educational advantages are the economic benefits (better management of the fuel budget) and ecological benefits (energy conservation and lower pollutant and CO₂ emissions).

Given the social and professional bonds forged by Main Forte, recognized in the Nord-Pas de Calais region for its effective action in professional integration, with a high back-to-work rate (60%), the Veolia Foundation is joining in the purchase of the company's SIE.