NCAT hires 7 new employees, will grow in the future

North Central Area Transit is adding seven new employees and as soon as more buses become available, the service will be growing more.

Commissioner Wayne Eichelkraut said NCAT is up to 56 employees as it moves away from an agreement made with Illinois Valley Community Hospital, which has since been taken by St. Margaret’s. Some of the new hires, Eichelkraut said, are the same drivers working for NCAT through St. Margaret’s. The rest came via applications NCAT received after advertisements.

Ottawa is the administrator for the bus service.

“What we’re looking at doing right now is we’re going to be on our own totally,” Eichelkraut said. “We think we could do this more reasonably at a better price because it was costing us roughly $300,000 a year to use them. We’re already doing all the dispatching and reservations, so we figured we could save the money.”

Eichelkraut said NCAT currently offers 300 rides per day and it has the demand for about 350, which he hopes the service can get to when more buses become available. Ottawa also is now renting a lot for $1,225 from Horizon House in Peru to store vehicles.

“The company that makes the buses is waiting for parts and we’re not the only ones waiting,” Eichelkraut said. “You have all these other groups waiting for the same thing but it used to be if a bus had a bad engine or something went wrong, you’d just get rid of the bus. Now you replace the engine as long as the frame is still good because there’s nothing else out there.”

Eichelkraut said a CDL is no longer required to become an NCAT bus driver: All that’s needed is a background check, a good driving record and a good personality. He said most of the drivers right now are retirees working part-time.