FIRST TAKE
School Bus Tech Crunch WRITTEN BY RYAN GRAY |
RYAN@STNONLINE.COM I
t might come as a surprise to some that only 30 per- cent of fleet managers and other school bus main- tenance professionals we surveyed for this month’s issue told us that their organization is currently experiencing a staff shortage in the shop. Meanwhile, anecdotally, we continue to hear the opposite. Te question of tech shortages was also asked of this
month’s “Garage Stars,” a new feature of the magazine that recognizes some of the industry’s best shop managers and chronicles their expertise and winning leadership styles. Despite this, nearly all talked at great length of how and why the shortage is affecting them, with the biggest reason given being low pay. Much like with school bus drivers, who don’t “just”
drive students, but are expected to be essentially mobile student safety managers, school bus mechanics of today don’t merely turn wrenches all day, as more than one fleet manager relayed to me. Garage staff truly must actually consist of technicians, which makes certifications and on-going education and training paramount to comprehending today’s complex vehicles. Te latest school bus models and their innova- tions make them essentially yellow, rolling computers that require trained professionals to diagnose the main- tenance issues with complicated software, and then go about fixing them. On one hand, this presents job security to garage staff like never before. But, like school bus drivers, pay is a factor for technicians. At the wage that many school districts, as bus companies (and even some dealers) can afford, the highly skilled professionals that bus garages so desperately thirst for are opting for higher-paying jobs in electronics or computers rather than crawling around on and beneath a bus all day. Recently, a fleet manager with nearly 30 years of experience in the industry discussed how his school district is, and has been for some time, experiencing brain drain tied not only to retiring technicians, but also to the lack of trade schools
that once turned out skilled new applicants. In his area alone, the fleet manager said he’s seen vocational institutes close down over the past decade or so. Where there used to be more than a dozen schools, now there are maybe three still in existence.
Another maintenance professional spoke of the diffi- cult task of not only the challenge of attracting tech- nicians from other industries but also getting them to grasp the importance of safety to school buses. So what are school bus operations to do? Apprentice-
ships are nothing new to school bus shops. But while it can prove difficult to fill these positions in this day and age, when many applicants want to skip straight to the job they think they should have rather than the one they are actually qualified for, several fleet professionals I spoke to said they have implemented programs that attract local high school or even college students as interns to learn the school bus maintenance trade. But more so, morale plays a big role in retaining good school bus technicians and attracing new ones, just as it does for any line of work. Tis month’s “Garage Stars,” while all dealing with their own shortages, excel at creat- ing a positive environment for their staff. As a result, the districts and bus companies these individuals work for grow, at least in part, because of the reliability and safety of their vehicles. And these are unattainable without the right people in the shop. It just might be that the 70 percent of survey respon- dents who said they are not experiencing a mechanic shortage might just have an ample number of bodies in the garage. But the question remains, are these employ- ees the best fit? ●
Ryan Gray, Editor-in-Chief
10 School Transportation News • AUGUST 2016
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
