Here we go again. I got a link to an article in The Wall Street Journal with a freight company representative lamenting the fact that good techs can't be found in today's market.
tech recruitment
I have written on this topic before and keep hearing the same song from the other side. Prospective techs are going into IT and engineering instead of truck repair.
How surprising! People are going into industries with better pay, better working conditions, that are more highly regarded by the public, than repair industries.
The author of this article talks about the promise of higher wages in the future. When will people in this industry realize that the motivation for getting into any of these jobs is money? Not the promise of higher wages at some future point in time, but a competitive wage, now.
If this industry really wants to pull good people from other industries it has to offer a comparable wage. Period.
I have been campaigning on this subject for several years, but keep hearing the same tune from shop owners, truck dealers, and industry gurus. They say the problem is that high school counselors push kids into college instead of tech schools, and that the public perception of repair is that it is dirty, physical labor suited only to those unable to do anything else. Talk about having your head in the sand!
A competitive wage right now would trump all the impediments to finding good people.
However, what will happen is that things will continue the way they are until shop customers start to complain about not getting service, until new truck sales crash because there is no one to repair them, until enough baby boomers leave the industry to really put the pinch on getting the work done.
What will happen is that manufacturers will engineer enhanced (and expensive) on board diagnostics so that less skill is required to repair trucks. Not that this will necessarily make repair faster or more efficient, but only less costly per hour at the end point.
What will happen is that it will come to the point where a 7 to 10 day wait for truck service will be the norm and the trucking industry is limited not by the number of drivers, but by the number of trucks that can be kept running.
tech recruitment
I have written on this topic before and keep hearing the same song from the other side. Prospective techs are going into IT and engineering instead of truck repair.
How surprising! People are going into industries with better pay, better working conditions, that are more highly regarded by the public, than repair industries.
The author of this article talks about the promise of higher wages in the future. When will people in this industry realize that the motivation for getting into any of these jobs is money? Not the promise of higher wages at some future point in time, but a competitive wage, now.
If this industry really wants to pull good people from other industries it has to offer a comparable wage. Period.
I have been campaigning on this subject for several years, but keep hearing the same tune from shop owners, truck dealers, and industry gurus. They say the problem is that high school counselors push kids into college instead of tech schools, and that the public perception of repair is that it is dirty, physical labor suited only to those unable to do anything else. Talk about having your head in the sand!
A competitive wage right now would trump all the impediments to finding good people.
However, what will happen is that things will continue the way they are until shop customers start to complain about not getting service, until new truck sales crash because there is no one to repair them, until enough baby boomers leave the industry to really put the pinch on getting the work done.
What will happen is that manufacturers will engineer enhanced (and expensive) on board diagnostics so that less skill is required to repair trucks. Not that this will necessarily make repair faster or more efficient, but only less costly per hour at the end point.
What will happen is that it will come to the point where a 7 to 10 day wait for truck service will be the norm and the trucking industry is limited not by the number of drivers, but by the number of trucks that can be kept running.
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