Canadian Volvo Techs to Compete on World Stage

(L – R): Tyler Kronebusch, Dan Orser, Clarence Oosterhoff and Matthew Giesbrecht from Babine Truck & Equipment.

GREENSBORO, NC. — Four Volvo service technicians from Prince George, BC are headed to Sweden this summer to compete against the OEM’s best techs from around the world.

Tyler Kronebusch, Dan Orser, Matthew Giesbrecht and Clarence Oosterhoff of Babine Truck & Equipment out-tech’ed 208 other North American Volvo teams, securing themselves a spot to compete at the Volvo International Service Training Award (VISTA) World Finals this June.

The VISTA 2012-2013 competition began in August 2012 and included three rounds of online competition. The field was then narrowed to five teams from the U.S. and Canada who traveled to Volvo’s North American headquarters in Greensboro, NC for the final round.

Finalists were then tested on their knowledge of service and parts literature and ability to look up parts and service information within the Volvo system. They also had to troubleshoot pre-determined faults placed on two Volvo trucks and a Volvo D13 engine.

Each member of the Babine team is a certified Volvo Master Technician. It’s the highest certification a Volvo tech can get, requiring more than two years of work experience, over 115 hours of training and the completion of various tests.

For this competition, each team invested an additional 34 hours of service training.

But the best way to prepare, said Matthew Giesbrecht “is doing our everyday jobs. We have to be keen and aware of every truck that comes into our shop, diagnose the issue, fix it to the best of our ability and get the customer satisfied.”

For Göran Nyberg, president, Volvo Trucks North American Sales and Marketing, the competition “boosts training, builds knowledge and strengthens teams, which ultimately improves the customer experience.”

The competition, which began as a national event in Scandinavia in 1957, expanded to a global event in 1977. This year, Volvo said they had 16,710 people forming 4,391 teams from 93 countries — the largest yet, “with a 70 percent increase in dealership participation compared with the 2011 event.”


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