ΜΗΠΔ΄«Γ½ Maintenance Technician Certification Program Equals Excellence and Opportunity
For Jonathan Hester, completing the Technician Certification Program (TCP) was about becoming a better truck maintenance technician, with an eye towards advancement.
A ΜΗΠΔ΄«Γ½ Truck Leasing employee in Garland, Texas, Hester was promoted from a tech II to a tech I after completing a training program thatβs nationally certified by the industryβs gold standard, the National Institute of Automotive Service Excellence, better known as .
βIt was a good experience and Iβm a better mechanic because of it,β Hester said. βI always keep trying to progress.β Hester endeavors to be a district service manager and then an area maintenance manager.
In 2008, ΜΗΠΔ΄«Γ½ was the first , and company to earn CASE certification for its Continuing Automotive Service Education program. And, the company has built on it since then.
βIn order to maintain a high standard of quality in our service departments, our technicians have to be the very best in the industry,β explained Mark Oliver, ΜΗΠΔ΄«Γ½βs senior vice president of maintenance. βOur TCP initiative is the key to promoting and providing the structure and discipline necessary to field a terrific group of technicians.β
There are nearly 4,000 ΜΗΠΔ΄«Γ½ truck maintenance technicians and almost 1,000 customer service technicians , which range from 16-foot box trucks for consumer do-it-yourself moves, to tractors that haul goods and services across the nationβs highways.
The U.S. technicians are trained via online, hands-on and classroom instructional methods.
Chris Schmidt has been with ΜΗΠΔ΄«Γ½ for over five years and works in Eau Claire, Wis. Like Hester, he was able to advance from a tech II to tech I. βIt was challenging and it took a lot of time, but it was definitely worth it,β he explained. βI would like to manage a shop and possibly become a district service manager.β
Oliver, from his office at the companyβs headquarters in Reading, Pa., takes personal pride in each new ΜΗΠΔ΄«Γ½ TCP certified technician.
βNothing makes me happier than to personally sign off on every recognition certificate that we award to each and every technician as they achieve certification at the various levels of the program,β Oliver said.
βOur customers deserve a very high degree of reliability and operating performance from our trucks,β he continued. βAs Roger ΜΗΠΔ΄«Γ½ said to me 28 years ago, βMark, if you take care of the customers the business will take care of itself.β That mindset is in our DNA at ΜΗΠΔ΄«Γ½, and this program allows us to do a better job of taking care of our customers, plain and simple.β
By Alen Beljin