The shop floor needs to be an ongoing classroom, experts say. Here are tips and resources for getting your technicians the training your fleet can’t live without.
Sometimes Brian Strach gets frustrated. He’s Midwest regional service manager for Hendrickson International, maker of complex parts – suspensions, brakes, springs, axles – used by countless truck fleets. He spends a lot of time on the road, training fleet technicians to maintain and repair these systems.
Sometimes the harried shop manager tells Strach in advance that he has only two hours, no more, to explain everything that needs explaining about, say, front axles. Strach then arrives on the shop floor only to be told, “Sorry, you’ve got one hour. Here are your 16 students.”
“It is difficult for fleets to give up the floor time,” Strach concedes, “but you have to be willing to give up that time, and get your people out of the pit occasionally.”
Increasing numbers of fleet managers agree. “You’ve got to get out there and promote training among your technicians, or you’re not going to have any technicians worth training,” says Lee Long, manager of fleet services for Southeastern Freight Lines in Columbia, S.C.
A good shop manager is a good educator, says Mike Jeffress, vice president of maintenance at Maverick Transportation in Little Rock, Ark., and immediate past general chairman of the Technology and Maintenance Council.
“You’re seeing more and more training available,” Jeffress says. “If anything, there’s so much of it out there that the hard part, for the fleet manager, becomes getting it organized and implemented.”
