Founder built New Flyer into largest bus firm in North America

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This article was published 05/04/2023 (1006 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jan den Oudsten, Officer of the Order of Canada and founder of New Flyer Industries, has passed away at age 92.

The Dutch immigrant, the 10th of 14 children in his family, moved to Winnipeg in 1985 and bought the struggling Flyer Industries from the province, which then owned it, for $1 million.

At the time, there were a couple of hundred employees at the Transcona operation and it had a very uncertain future. The company is now the largest bus company in North America. In addition to its large facilities in Winnipeg, it owns production plants across the U.S. and in the U.K.

His father owned Den Oudsten Bussen B.V., a Dutch coachbuilder and components manufacturer that was founded in 1926 just outside the city of Woerden.

When he was honoured with the pioneer award by the Canadian Manufactures and Exporters in 2019, his wife and partner, Maria Den Oudsten, said Jan had many ideas about how to build buses, but his brothers bullied him and prevented him from implementing his innovations at the family-owned company in Holland.

So he came to Canada when the Flyer opportunity presented itself.

He was so attached to the Winnipeg bus company he salvaged from the edge of the scrap heap in the mid-’80s that when New Flyer Industries was sold in 2004 by the private equity firm that Den Oudsten had partnered with, he couldn’t bear to stay in Winnipeg if it meant he was not going to be able to be part of the company he built.

He was a “hands-on” leader who was interested in his employees. He had a reputation for knowing every employee by name and was well-respected by the rank and file.

Ron Koslowsky, the head of the CME Manitoba, remembers den Oudsten as a “genuine character” who was a great representative of the manufacturing industry.

“He was more than just a successful business person, he was a real community guy,” said Koslowsky. “He helped build a business that is now one of our biggest if not the biggest in town. There were all kinds of things not working out terribly well at Flyer when he bought it. He took it and built it into a very successful business from which NFI Inc. later emerged.”

Among other things, he is credited with bringing low-floor technology to the North American market that is now standard in the industry and was involved in other innovations like the early development of hydrogen fuel cell technology applications and the 60-foot articulated diesel-electric hybrid bus.

In 2019, he and Maria donated $1.5 million to RRC Polytech (then still called Red River College), which was one of the largest gifts the college has ever received from an individual donor.

That gift is recognized with the naming of the Jan den Oudsten Vehicle Technology and Research Centre at RRC Polytech’s main campus.

David Petis, the executive director of Advancement at RRC Polytech, said the gift came out of his passion for the bus industry.

“In light of his career and entrepreneurial spirit and the success of New Flyer and his contribution to that he wanted to make more of a statement in perpetuity about the value of education and its partnership with industry,” Petis said.

Long remembered as a true innovator in the industry — he has been inducted into both the Canadian Urban Transit Association’s and American Public Transit Association’s Hall and Fame — he is widely remembered as an excellent individual.

Petis said, “He was a sharp man, not just a good business man and a community-minded guy. You felt a gentlemanly charisma every time you spoke to him.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca