What Virmani gleaned from the embassy guidebooks was that Canadians did not, in fact, cook, but instead enjoyed TV dinners. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was enough for him to take a leap into the great unknown. Virmani landed in Toronto in November 1975. Three days after arriving, he was washing windows at a skyscraper in the financial district.“You know Drake’s song about starting on the bottom?” Virmani said. “He and I like to joke about it, because I started at the top.
December is typically a busy time of year, but then the past nine months have been a stretch unlike any other since the company’s inception in 2002. Stores may be closed, and cities locked down, but consumers are clicking like mad, and the more they click, the more boxes there are to deliver. If you have a dream, and you’re not stubborn about it, then you’re just a dreamer. You got to be a dreamer and a doerIn short, it has been a dizzying time in the air cargo business, a line of work, Virmani said, that typically trundles along in wholly unglamorous fashion. Employees pack cargo and load planes; planes take off, land and the cargo is unloaded; and the cycle repeats.
“If you have a dream, and you’re not stubborn about it, then you’re just a dreamer,” he said. “You got to be a dreamer and a doer.” From the outside, Virmani’s timing looked terrible, but he didn’t see things that way. Planes stopped flying after 9/11 and distressed companies started selling off aircraft at steep discounts. He bought four Boeing 727s from a Florida carrier and Cargojet was born.
Son and father, Vinay and Ajay Virmani, the star and producer of the film Breakaway, pose for a photo at the Roots store in downtown Toronto in 2011.Employees refer to the chief executive as “buddy,” which sums up his unpretentious, welcoming nature.