Making the Grade
Maintenance & Technology Council’s new committee aims to improve trucking education
By Bethany May Managing Editor
The labor shortage in the trucking
industry is much-discussed with num- bers, forecasts, likely causes and promis- ing solutions. For the hiring managers looking for diesel technicians to main- tain the fleets of increasingly complex trucks, the problem is a skills gap—plen- ty of people, but not enough know how to bring a truck back into compliance or conduct a preventative maintenance inspection. According to Arkansas Chamber
of Commerce statistics, there are an estimated 5.6 million job openings nationwide, with approximately 60,000 of these unfilled positions in Arkansas in highly skilled technical fields. Teach more students what it takes
to be a professional diesel technician, construction worker or welder, you say. The sentence is simple; the reality is
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complex. There are students in training for these positions, but that training often falls short of preparing them for a real day on the job. George Arrants, an automotive
educational consultant for National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation (NATEF) said, “[The indus- try] graduates 10,738 diesel technicians a year on average. If you multiply that by 10 years, we shouldn’t have a short- age. But we do.” One of the reasons shops cannot
keep the “Now Hiring” signs out of their windows is that technician pro- grams in secondary schools, community colleges, and even 4-year universities are not teaching students the skills the industry needs them to have. The students are “virtually unemployable” or limited to the types of jobs they are actually qualified for when they gradu- ate or receive certificates.
OPEN COMMUNICATION On June 15, the Arkansas Trucking
Association Maintenance & Technology Council created a new committee to correct the miscommunication or, in many cases, the lack of communication between schools that educate techni- cians and the companies that hire them. The committee’s goal? To address industry workforce needs by developing educational curriculum guidelines in secondary and postsecondary Arkansas schools. The group evolved out of a conver-
sation between Kenneth Calhoun, the vice president of customer relations for Truck Centers of Arkansas, and Mike Jeffress, the vice president of mainte- nance at Maverick Transportation. The two colleagues shared similar frustra- tions with finding enough men and women that have both the soft skills and technical training to meet the
Issue 5 2016 | ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT
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