Hello. I’m Victor Cummings. I’m vice president of service operations for Rush Enterprises.

In your view, what makes a good technician?

In my view, it’s attitude and aptitude. Now first, you know, we look for folks that really have the desire to be a technician. They have a certain DNA, you know, wanting to learn, grow, and develop their technical expertise. And really, that’s where it starts. Of course, work ethic and commitment. There are a number of things that, you know, come into play, but really, it all starts with attitude and aptitude.

How long does it take for a good tech to become a really good tech?

Generally speaking, in in my experience, at Rush, we have technicians level one through five. Level one is where they start, of course, And most often, they progress on an annual basis, so it takes at least five years for most techs to become a level five. I would say there are a few that have made it prior to that, there are some that take a little longer. But generally speaking, it’s it’s about a five year road trip.

Would you know how many techs are employed by Rush?

Close to three thousand. Three thousand. That’s all encompassing. It’s it’s our Rush Truck  Center technicians, body shop technicians, Rush truck leasing, technicians. So all in, we got just around, 3,000 technicians.

How difficult it is to retain these people who you have trained over a period of time? How do you keep a hold of them?

That’s a that’s a great question. It’s a challenging dynamic. You know, the whole industry struggles with that. Twenty, thirty years ago, there were there were more technicians than there were quality jobs, and and it’s, you know, an inverse order now. You you have more job openings than you do qualified techs, and and it’s very easy for a technician to to jump ship, you know, leave for more money or what have you. Sometimes, you know, with the less experienced techs, the decision to leave can be more emotional.

We find with our level four and five, we have very, very low turnover. Once they get past that, you know, midpoint threshold, they they seem to stick. So it really requires a great emphasis on our part to stay highly engaged with the lower level technicians. That’s probably the the single most important component.

When you say in engage, it’s in training or it is in, let’s say, communication?

It simple things like walking the shop and having conversation with the technician. It’s getting to know them, having meetings with the new hires to understand what are their obstacles, what are their frustrations. There’s no silver bullet. There’s no one recipe we found that is the secret sauce to tech retention with the lower level techs, but we can tell you that the common denominator is engagement. If you’re having those conversations, if you’re ensuring they’re getting the support, the guidance, the mentorship, etcetera, then, you know, the turnover rate is much lower with the with the technicians when you have that level of engagement.