Help Wanted Sonora CA

Technician. Diesel. Trailer repair. Fabrication. Maintenance. Welding. This handful of key words, entered into the job search engine Monster.com, recently tagged over one hundred resumes for job openings for heavy truck technicians at Milwaukee, WI-based Advanced Waste Services. That has made the two men in the picture very happy, because they have three technician jobs to fill yesterday, and like most other fleet managers in the same situation, they have been colliding head-first with the technician shortage that has plagued the industry for years.

When Jason Derby signed on as vice president of maintenance operations at Advanced Waste Services six months ago, he had his work cut out for him. The company was using its fleet of 38 pickup trucks and company cars, 29 semis, 42 trailers (including van trailers, walking floor trailers, tankers, and roll-off trailers), 11 vacuum trucks, two box trucks, and two water blasters to transport industrial waste products from across the Midwest to its facilities in Milwaukee, Rockford, IL and Portage, IN, and they were doing it with exactly one technician and one service bay.

"The technician basically lived here," says Derby.

What's made it workable, until recently, was the fact that the fleet of tractors was on a full-maintenance lease from Penske. And 13 new Peterbilt tractors are being brought in on full-maintenance leases from Paclease.

But just about everything else in the fleet is company-owned, and so Derby had his hands full...

"For the first step I thought I'd come in here and tweak a few knobs and sit in my office and direct traffic and life will be good," he says. "But the business is very complicated, and it took me quite a while to get comfortable with the plant equipment. I myself have to learn how to work on everything, and there's not much of a training regimen that can prepare you to work at a company like this. It was pretty much, jump in there, get the welder and torch out, and start fixing stuff.

"Because," he asks, "how am I going to train, manage and lead eight to ten mechanics if I don't really understand what we're doing?"

FIRST HIRE

Things started out smoothly for Derby. Teaming up with vice president of human resources Bill Christel, Derby quickly found two new technicians to add to the staff. One came to him through an ad placed in the local newspaper; the other came from his driver staff.

"We spent about $1,000, which is not unusual," says Christel of the initial newspaper advertising. "It's fair to say that we're disappointed. When it comes to finding highly qualified mechanics, we have found that our success rate through that advertising venue alone has not been very effective for us."

"The people who answered the ads weren't necessarily the type of people we were looking for," says Derby. "In my judgement, they may have been unemployed for a reason. The good mechanics, in our industry, are already employed. There's not a whole lot of free-roaming free agents out there. I think our best avenue has been referrals."

Nonetheless, through their advertising they found a Toyota certified technician who was ready for a change, and had the right attitude.

"Basically, it was core values" that got him the job, Derby says. "A lot of it comes down to resume, but when I sit down and talk to somebody, a lot of it comes down to core values, and the chemistry that you have with somebody. What's their work ethic?

"He had owned his own business for a while; he was a Matco tool distributor, so here's somebody with some drive. I saw that spark in him," Derby says. "I explained how elite performance is a big part of what we do in maintaining our equipment, and he thought that was great and he wanted to be a part of this."

Unfortunately, he wasn't part of it for long.

"He chose to go back to the automotive world," says Derby. "In automotive, they probably have a harder time finding mechanics than we do, and they knew where he went and they had his number, and it was just a matter of time before they reeled him back in. They were very motivated to get him back."

HOME-GROWN

Derby's second new technician, Dale Latrelle, can probably be counted on to stick around for a while, because he rose up out of the ranks of the company's drivers.

On staff at the company's Rockford facility, Latrelle approached Derby when he got wind of Derby's plans to expand and upgrade the maintenance program.

"He came to me and said he'd really like to be involved in the maintenance program," Derby says.

On the day Fleet Maintenance visited the garage, Latrelle was helping to strip down the old Penske lease trucks that are being replaced by the new Petes from Paclease.

"We're getting him involved slowly," explains Derby. "He's doing inspections and things like that. He had a slow day driving today, so he ran a trailer up here and he's going to spend the day in the shop. That's how we train: hands-on."

SHORT-HANDED

Eventually, Derby sees himself with a staff of eight to ten technicians at the company's three locations, but after the hiring then losing the Toyota technician, it's fair to say that he and Christel are being a little more choosy.

"I think in addition to attracting people to a job, we're interested in attracting uniquely qualified people that not only are excellent mechanics, but are a great for us because they can think in the way we think: we can do more; we can be different," explains Christel. "That's a pretty good attractor for us, for people who are highly motivated."

"Right now the hunt is on," says Derby. "I'm looking for those journeymen mechanics with 15 to 20 years' experience. Because of that experience, they may have had three or four jobs over that career, where they've been exposed to electrical work, they know how to run 110 or 220 or swap out a motor, because that's a big part of the job, too, as well as the welding and the fabricating."

OLD SCHOOL VS. NEW SCHOOL

In an earlier job as service manager for a Peterbilt dealer, Derby needed technicians who were up to date on the latest technology. "I wanted that ASE certified technician," he says. "If you don't know how to plug in this lap top into a C15 Cat and extract the data and figure out the problem, then what are you doing here?"

At Advanced Waste Services, however, Derby is in an entirely different world, and he's looking for an entirely different kind of technician.

The century-old brick building that the company occupies is filled with dozens of gigantic holding tanks, miles of plumbing, dozens of pumps and motors, and a dizzying assortment of waste-treatment equipment, and the vehicle technicians have to keep all of that hardware working, as well. There's nary a computer in sight, and even in the new, expanded maintenance bay that Derby is developing for the company, the technicians will be noticeably computer-less.

"A lot of heavy duty truck technicians who have been doing it for years and years and years are plugging into computers now and getting away from the good old-fashioned mechanics," he says. "They need that mechanical aptitude to solve problems and come up with solutions on the run.

"What we're looking for," he concludes, "is those mechanics who can work with their hands, who know hydraulics, those guys who have the cognitive skills to look at a problem and say, 'Here's the solution,' and be able to cut, fabricate, weld, replace parts, make repairs, whatever they have to do to fix it."

RESCUED BY A MONSTER

Which brings us back to those key words: Technician. Diesel. Trailer repair. Fabrication. Maintenance. Welding.

When Christel searched the resumes on Monster.com using those words, he came up with over 100 possible job candidates. But which of those would have the unique background and attitude that are so important to Derby in his quest to build a superior maintenance program?

"We found five that we consider worthwhile prospects," says Christel. "I hope it turns into a hire situation. We're very pleased with the pool of five; we're about to start calling them in today. That's how hot an issue this is for us.

"You look at their resumes, and they look like ideal candidates: 15, 20 years' experience, plumbing, welding, they've had some plant experience as well as dealership-level truck mechanics," he says. "Those are the kind of people we want."

Derby is cautious of resumes that have been posted on the Monster.com site for more than a few months. Those candidates may have already found jobs, or they may have never been unemployed, but are perpetually fishing for something new, or more money. "That's fine, people always want to do better," says Derby. "But we want to bring people in for a career. We don't want somebody who's just out for a buck, and will go to the highest bidder."

"We never just jump at filling a spot, or getting a warm body," Christel explains. "We are being proactive in trying to find the right kind of person, and we're willing to be as patient as possible to find them. But we have a lot of things happening simultaneously, in terms of the truck wash project, taking delivery of 13 new Peterbilts, and building the maintenance shop, and the parts room…"

"And, and, and…" Derby interjects.

"And finding the right people concurrent with that," says Christel.

URGENCY AND PATIENCE

So, there is a sense of urgency to Advanced Waste Services' maintenance situation, but also a sense of patience, of waiting for just the right people to meet the company's high standards.

It has taken Derby time to bring the company's maintenance program up to a level he's satisfied with, but it's clear that he's still not satisfied.

"It wasn't proactive maintenance (when I started), which I think is what the company wanted to do when they brought me in," he explains. "Instead of firefighting—oh oh, something in the plant is leaking over here, a truck has a flat tire so we run over there—we wanted to build a foundation of proactive preventive maintenance, with a group of trained technicians with a mastermind behind it all. We wanted to take that as a template and take that to our Portage, IN operation and build one there, and then to our Rockford, IL location and build one there."

And the plans are big. The company recently leased a new section of the building they occupy, and Derby plans to turn it into a "drive-through" service area with portable lifts and a computer-inventoried parts room. The space is already in use, although it is, at present, not fully-equipped. The old single bay garage, meanwhile, is on the first stages of being converted to a trailer wash area.

With so much going on all at once, Derby realizes that if he had hired more technicians too quickly, he would not have been able to utilize them adequately. "I think it would have been very hard if I had started this job six months ago and we would have hired four journeyman technicians right away. What do you do?" he says. "I had to build a foundation first; I had to build my knowledge of this company. It takes a little time to get the lay of the land and determine how many guys we need, and learn what's going on in Rockford and what's going on in Indiana, then bring all that back here and try to spit out the solutions."

TRAINING DAY

Because Derby hopes to hire technicians with 15 to 20 years of experience, he is not too worried about training his new hires. The company's training library consists of some Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) videos, and a growing file of "Unique Methods," detailed in-house procedurals that will eventually describe how to repair and maintain virtually every system and component on every vehicle and piece of equipment in the company.

"Say I get a new guy in in two weeks, and he's a pretty good hydraulic fitter, a pretty good diesel mechanic," Derby says. "If he's as good as he says he is, or he's a journeyman level, I can give him that sheet of paper and he can probably do that as well or better than I can."

The company's third training tool is something Derby describes as, "Hey, come with me, I'm going to show you how to do it."

After all, that's how he learned when he started the job last year. Why shouldn't he train the new technicians the same way?

PLAN B

When he's fully staffed, Derby hopes to move more maintenance in-house.

"As we build this, and we get two shifts going, and the drive-through maintenance garage is going," he says, "we'll look hard at what makes the most sense: full maintenance lease, at a certain cost per mile, or… most larger fleets can maintain their trucks for three or four cents a mile internally. So you'll see us shift to that, but if we did it right now we'd be buried."

But he still needs to get those three technicians into the fold, and he doesn't know if the candidates from Monster.com will pan out. If they don't, what's Plan B?

Christel and Derby agree that referrals will always be a good source of new candidates, but they can't count on finding the right person at the right time by relying on referrals.

Derby will not consider recruiting skilled technicians away from his local Peterbilt dealer, for some very good reasons:

"I need guys here, but I also need good technicians still working at Peterbilt to fix our trucks at night," he explains. "And you try to be upstanding; you don't call people at their jobs trying to pull them out for money. Because then a person's leaving for the wrong reason.

"We'd rather build an elite maintenance group, and create an environment where people will call us and say, 'I've heard about you guys and I want to check you out. I hear you've got some really great things going on,'" he says. "I think that's the way for any fleet maintenance manager to solve their technician shortage problems: build a better maintenance facility that's a beacon of light that all the best technicians gravitate towards."