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Author: David Hollis

  • Most Americans cannot handle all but most basic car repairs themselves

    Most Americans cannot handle all but most basic car repairs themselves

    Professional technicians of America, you can rest easy tonight safe in the knowledge you have plenty of job security.

    A new survey by a company providing personal financial services and advice finds while most Americans car owners are capable of basic — very basic! — maintenance, they are far less confident in their ability to do even slightly more demanding automotive repair tasks.

    Florida-based Finance Buzz found in its recent survey of 1,000 car owners that while 80% of them can put air in their cars tires and 78% can add windshield washer fluid successfully. However, less than half — just 48% — said they can change a tire without help. And, just 38% said they could perform an oil change on their own.

    Even dashboard warning lights can be a bit confusing for some. While 78% recognized a check engine light, only 13% could successfully identify a brake warning light. Many folks even struggled with basic paperwork: 70% knew what their car’s monthly insurance premium costs, but slightly more than half, just 52%, knew their coverage limits.

    The FinanceBuzz report finds many American car owners will depend on pros like you to handle many repairs. The percentage of respondents and the repair tasks they’ll need your help with include:

    • replace spark plugs – 73%
    • perform an oil change – 64%
    • replace an engine air filter – 55%
    • replace their car’s battery – 53%
    • change a tire – 52%
    • replace a wiper blade – 39%
    • jump start a car – 38%

    One’s confidence in their ability to make a repair — specifically, perform an oil change — depends in large part their age. The percentage of car owners who would need you help includes:

    • 53% of Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964)
    • 39% of Gen X ( born between 1965 and 1980)
    • 31% of Millennials (born between 1981 and 1995)
    • 29% of Gen Z (born between 1996 and 2010)

    Things get a little doifferenent when it comes to one especially specific task: driving a stick shift. The survey said while 62% of all drivers claim they know how to drive stick, that number increases to 69% among Boomers, but tumbles to just over half — 51% — of millennials.

    See the full FinanceBuzz report online.

  • Here’s how to make good first impression with a dynamite resume

    Here’s how to make good first impression with a dynamite resume

    Is having a good, solid, great-looking resume when applying for a professional technician job important? 

    No.

    It’s  extremely important!

    Think of your resume as the ideal way to make a good first impression with a potential employer. It’s also your best shot at getting an all-important interview, which moves you up the line of candidates hoping to land the job you seek.

    A rock-solid resume ought to:

    • Be concise but thorough
    • Deliver a total picture of you and your qualifications
    • Outline your skills as a technician but also your attributes as an employee
    • Not oversell
    • Be clean and error free

    A well-constructed resume winds up being more than the sum of its various parts.

    And, those parts include:

    Contact Information

    • Include your full name, of course, where you live; city and state are fine. Include your phone number and email address.

    Summary and Objective

    • This ought to be a brief summary of the skills you have, how long you have worked as a technician and in what kind of settings. Briefly mention what you hope to achieve in the field.

    Education

    • Simply list the school/college you attended and the diploma/certificate/degree you earned.

    Work History

    • This ought to be in reverse chronological order beginning with your current or most recent position. Include the name of the company or dealership, where it’s located and the dates of your employment.
    • Then add a bullet list of what you did there. Include the sorts of repairs you did, the types and brands of equipment you worked on, and any specialized tools you may have used.
    • If you’re a veteran technician with a long work history, there is no need to list every job you have ever held going back to your first. Include the most recent three or four positions.
    • Contrarily, if you are a beginner fresh out of a high school program or are a new college graduate, this may be a much shorter portion of your resume. But, be sure to include any internships, part-time jobs you have held, or even if you have worked as a volunteer.

    Certifications

    • This is an especially important part of the resume of a professional technician. Be sure to include if you’re ASE certified, have OEM certificates, any specialized training you have attended, and the in-house training provided by employers.

    Skills

    • There are two parts to this portion of the resume: hard skills (the actual work you do, i.e. engine rebuilds, electrical systems, using diagnostic tools, etc.) and soft skills (working with customers, mentoring other technicians, being a team player, attention to detail). Both are important, and show you are a good technician and a good employee.
    • If you have been in the business for any amount of time, your resume most likely could be pretty detailed. However, do your best to keep it to just one page; two pages at the most. That may be difficult, but keep in mind the person reading it – your potential future employer – is busy and appreciates brevity. This is a good chance for you to show you can meet their expectations.

    Final Tips

    • Use a professional-looking template; easily found online
    • Print it on good quality, plain, white paper
    • Be sure it is error free. Running spellcheck is not enough; have someone else give it a read to spot anything you might have missed
    • Do your best to tailor it to the specific job and potential employer; look at their website and social media pages to get a sense of their culture and style
    • Lastly, always keep your resume up to date; you never know when you may need it 

  • Truck dealers Tell Congress right to repair bill unnecessary, damaging

    Truck dealers Tell Congress right to repair bill unnecessary, damaging

    A major industry organization is telling Congress recent proposed legislation would unfairly hinder businesses that sell and service medium- and heavy-duty trucks by lumping them in with typical consumer automobiiles.

    Recently, members of the American Truck Dealers (ATD) sent a letter to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) voicing the organization’s opposition to H.R. 1566/S. 1379, the “Right to Equitable and Professional Auto Industry Repair (REPAIR) Act.

    In a statement issued by the ATD, the organization representing over 3,200 dealers said right to repair bills are “overly broad, ignore serious vehicle privacy, intellectual property, and further inhibit an industry already facing significant challenges.”

    ATD’s letter to Congress said:

    “… federal law has long recognized the difference between light- and heavy-duty vehicles. Medium- and heavy-duty trucks are purpose-built, highly customized vehicles sold almost exclusively to commercial and government entities — not to individual consumers. By contrast, light-duty vehicles are mass-produced for the public and designed primarily for passenger use. H.R. 1566/S. 1379 is overbroad as it would regulate a heavy-duty vocational truck such as a school bus, refuse hauler, or cement mixer the same as a family sedan.

    “Supporters of H.R. 1566 and S. 1379 claim this legislation will enhance consumer repair access, but heavy-duty trucks are not consumer products. No evidence we are aware of has been presented indicating that independent repair shops are being denied the information or tools needed to repair medium- and heavy-duty trucks. In fact, service information is readily available from manufacturers, and the industry has long participated in the National Automotive Service Task Force, which provides a reliable mechanism for resolving disputes over repair data access.

    “This legislation is overbroad, unnecessary, and adds needless red tape at a time when the truck industry is already facing economic challenges from regulations that have increased costs and decreased commercial truck sales. We urge Congress to reject H.R. 1566/S. 1379.”

  • Kenworth Essentials: A successful pipeline of entry-level technicians from education to dealerships

    Kenworth Essentials: A successful pipeline of entry-level technicians from education to dealerships

    In today’s battle to find and keep good, qualified technicians, some dealerships have a distinct advantage: the ones that can say they sell and service the  “The World’s Best” trucks, Kenworth.

    But, it’s not just that these trucks have a reputation for excellence built over the last 102 years. It’s that Kenworth dealers also have available to them a successful corporate program that helps steer young technicians from high school or college programs to their service department doors.

    The Kenworth Essentials program fosters connections between students, high schools and colleges and dealerships. It does so by working with all three constituencies. The Essentials program’s managers:

    • Help high school students identify a college program to attend or a dealership for possible employment
    • Work with educational programs so their curricula deliver the most up-to-date training required of entry-level technicians
    • Assist dealerships make connections with educational programs and ensure they’re offering the sorts of opportunities their graduates seek when they get hired

    Working With Students

    The best way for students to receive the benefits of Kenworth Essentials is, like so many other things today, to get online.

    “Kenworthessentials.com gives an introduction to our program, and gives them a place to reach out to,” said Bill Metzger, a program manager with Kenworth Essentials. “It gives them all of our program managers’ contact information, and what we prefer them to do is get in contact with one of us, because we all do have assigned territories that we work with or schools that we work with, and we can start the conversation with a student. 

    “If it’s a high school student, we can talk to them about where they’re at, where they want to go, what they want to do. We can connect them with a school that’s in our network.” 

    Or, if the student is already in an educational program, a Kenworth Essentials program manager can initiate contact with a dealer to help the student find a job after graduation.

    “They’re at a school trying to be a technician,”  said Adam Stone, a program manager for the West Coast and Southwest. “So we don’t have to convince them that they want to be a technician. We just want to convince them to be a Kenworth technician.”

    Working with students also often means working with parents, especially at the high school level.

    Darren Erickson is one of several program managers who are part of Kenworth Essentials. He said part of his job is explaining what a technician’s job isn’t as much as what it is.

    “Reaching out to the parents of young kids and helping them understand what kind of career opportunities exist in the trucking industry is really what we’re trying to do,” said Erickson, who covers the U.S. West Coast and Canada for Kenworth essentials. “There’s a misconception that a technician is a dirty mechanic caked in grease, and in some cases that’s true. But, there is a lot more working with laptops and computers.” 

    Working With High Schools & Colleges

    The folks working in Kenworth Essentials cast a wide net when it comes to educational institutions. To date they work with 200 schools across the U.S. and Canada. Program Manager Dennis Bullock said about 25% of the educational institutions are high schools with vocational programs. The rest are trade schools and colleges.

    The goal of Kenworth Essentials is to help schools and colleges provide the sort of training an entry-level technician needs to get and be successful in a job at a dealership. Kenworth gives schools and students access to training the company has developed.

    Metzger said, “It starts out at the very base of what a tech needs to know, and we kind of build on it from there. It goes through about 32 to 35 hours of online modules they can do. 

    “Schools have different approaches about how they have the students do the modules. Some of them use them in the curriculum, some of them use them as homework. The students have access to this while they’re going to the school, and they can access it on their own computer from home or at school, however they want to do it.”

    Once students have completed those modules, Metzer said there are two instructor-led classes students complete to help them achieve their certification.

    This, said Metzger, aids both the student and the dealership. If the dealership sees the student has earned their Kenworth Essentials certification, then they know that potential new hire has the basic knowledge needed to perform as an entry-level technician. 

    “This is all tailored around entry-level technicians,” he said. “So it’s the basic knowledge that has been out in the industry. We see the need for knowledge that the entry level techs need to know going in, starting their career with a Kenworth dealer.”

    Then, after graduation and if hired by a dealership that technician would go through more training to become certified by Kenworth.

    Working With Dealerships

    The final part of the equation, and possibly the most important one, is the answer to the question, “Now what?” 

    Karen Apple helps dealership personnel and entry-level technicians find that answer. 

    She’s a curriculum development and retention specialist, and says her role is to ensure that graduates and dealerships see there is a career path, one that is clearly demonstrated on the Kenworth Essentials website. Apple said she wants new technicians “know how to go from level one technician to level two technician and so on.”

    In addition to the career path map, Apple said Kenworth Essentials also has a Technician Toolkit, which explains what a technician needs to advance into different roles.

    The Toolkit, said Apple,“ identifies those core competencies for each of the roles (on the career path). So really, it spells out this is a skillset that this dealership expects you to have within this role. So it allows you to have, not only  a visual to let you see how you can grow in your career, and how this is in fact a career, but also what skills you need to help develop as you grow in your career.” 

    Kenworth Essentials also helps dealerships by urging them to be part of a school’s advisory board so dealers know what is being taught and so educators know the needs of the dealership. Also, the program also offers tips on how to put their best foot forward by inviting students to tour their facilities, and by explaining the training opportunities, compensation, and benefits new hires can expect.

    But, one of the best things dealerships have going for them is their affiliation with Kenworth.

    Dennis Bullock said when he goes to trade shows and hiring fairs, young people know and are attracted to the brand. He said people will come up to him and tell him how their fathers and grandfathers drove Kenworths. And, it’s something they say proudly.

  • W.W. Williams: Technicians required for a variety of industries

    W.W. Williams: Technicians required for a variety of industries

     W.W. Williams is a sprawling, multi-faceted company serving a variety of industries, all of which require the skills of professional technicians. A lot of them.

    The list of the segments of the economy served by the Dublin, Ohio-based firm includes:

    • Construction and mining
    • Government and the military
    • Municipalities
    • Hospitals
    • Recreational vehicles
    • Data centers
    • Marine vessels
    • Locomotive and rail
    • Commercial entities including trucking, power generation and logistics and packaging

    It takes some 1,200 W.W. Williams employees at 50 locations in 23 U.S. states and Mexico to meet the product and service needs of the companies in these industry segments. Jennifer Van Arsdale, talent acquisition supervisor for the company, said more than 75% of that number are professional technicians.

    She said most managers are currently seeking technicians who can be productive quickly with minimal initial training. Those technicians also generally stay longer, with most turnover due to retirement or dissatisfaction with the work environment rather than pay, according to Van Arsdale.

    However, that does not mean newly graduated entry-level technicians shouldn’t consider applying to W.W. Williams. She said hiring depends on the specific needs of the location, with some branches hiring more entry-level trainees for refrigeration and transmission technician roles due to higher demand.

    The Southwest is one area where professional technicians are in high demand because of that region’s strong economy.

    “We’re trying to amp up our business out there just because it is a good market and I think everybody’s doing the same thing,” said Van Arsdale. “So everybody’s trying to hire technicians now to kind of increase their business. And it’s just a tough market because we could come to them and we could offer them $25 and the guy across the street’s going to offer $27 and they’re going to obviously take the $27.”

    Van Arsdale said W.W. Williams has no absolute requirements for the types of certifications they like their technicians to have. However, she said ASE certifications and any certifications from schools are valued and can lead to higher pay. While some positions like Allison transmission repair may prefer specific certifications, they are generally not mandatory. 

    According to Van Arsdale, W.W. Williams does have in-house trainers who provide field and classroom training. The company also utilizes manufacturers’ programs for specific training, like that provided by Detroit Diesel.

    W.W. Williams has a technician career roadmap process with varying levels from apprentice to journeyman, requiring specific skills to advance with increased pay. This is an ongoing process evaluated during yearly reviews to determine training needs. While some technicians start at the apprentice level, others can enter at higher levels based on their skills.

    “We have different levels of technicians that go from apprentice up to journeymen, and we have a roadmap laid out where upon hire they would sit and have a discussion with their manager and our trainers to decide what their roadmap is gonna look like for that specific tech,” said Van Arsdale. “So each level of technician within our organization is required to have certain skills, and once they acquire them via on the job training, classroom chain training, whatever training they get, that’s when they can move up to the next level. And, obviously as they move up throughout those levels, they get an increase in pay.”

    Filling the company’s need for the wide variety of professional technicians for W.W. Williams requires a recruiting team of four people, each one serving a different section of the country.

    The company also maintains close working relationships with major colleges like Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan and Ohio Technical College in Cleveland.

    You can find W.W. Williams career opportunities here.

  • Techs Rock Awards to be presented live at SEMA show

    Techs Rock Awards to be presented live at SEMA show

    The TechForce Foundation, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to building the pipeline of skilled technicians, has partnered with the SEMA Show, the automotive aftermarket industry’s premier trade event, to present the 7th Annual Techs Rock Awards.

    For the first time in the program’s history, the awards will be presented live on stage at the 2025 SEMA Show in Las Vegas.

    Winners will be honored on Nov. 5, during the SEMA Show. 

    Each year, the Techs Rock Awards recognize standout students and working professionals in the technician field. This year marks a major milestone. Honorees/grand prize recipients will be celebrated live at the SEMA Show, the epicenter of the global automotive aftermarket. In front of thousands of manufacturers, employers, educators, and media, the nation’s top technicians will receive the recognition they have earned through their skill, dedication, and impact.

    “Technicians don’t just fix things. They keep America moving,” said Jennifer Maher, CEO of TechForce Foundation. “The SEMA Show gives us a national platform to say, ‘We see you. We value you.’ And for the students preparing to join the workforce, it shows there is a future in this field that is respected and real.”

    Finalists will be selected in six categories: 

    • Automotive and Motorsports
    • Diesel
    • Collision, Restoration and Welding
    • Aviation, Motorcycle and Marine
    • Evolving Technologies
    • HVAC

    This year’s judging panel will include well-known voices in the industry, including ChrisFix, YouTube’s most-followed automotive DIY creator, and Humble Mechanic, a trusted voice in technician education and culture.


    “The SEMA Show is where the automotive aftermarket industry’s future takes shape – through breakthrough products, new ideas, and rising talent,” said RJ de Vera, SEMA Vice President of Marketing. “Technicians play a critical role in that future, and with the TechForce Foundation, we’re proud to spotlight and support those who will carry the torch forward.”

    Nominations open June 24 and close Aug. 11. Anyone can nominate a deserving student or technician at TechForce.org/TechsRock. A panel of judges will review submissions and select the finalists. From Sept. 24 through Oct. 15, the public will vote to determine one student and one working technician as Grand Prize Winners. Both will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas to be honored on stage during the show.

    Since 2018, the Techs Rock Awards have recognized 77 outstanding students and technicians. The program highlights the value of technical careers and helps lift up role models who are shaping the future of the skilled trades.The SEMA Show is a trade show produced by the Specialty Equipment Market Association, a nonprofit trade association founded in 1963. Since the first SEMA Show debuted in 1967, the annual event has served as the leading venue bringing together manufacturers and buyers within the automotive specialty equipment industry.

    TechForce Foundation’s mission is to champion all students to and through their education and into careers as professional technicians. The Foundation supports the technician workforce by awarding more than $6 million each year in scholarships and grants to financially disadvantaged students. TechForce also works to shift public perception of this evolving, high-tech STEM career path and provides hands-on career exploration and workforce development programs in communities across the country.