This is America's Trucking Network with Kevin Gordon.
Welcome aboard, Thanks for tuning in on this Tuesday morning. We are on the floor twentieth anniversary Rush Enterprises Tech Skills Rodeo at the Gaylord opry Land Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. And I want to tell you, for my first time, I didn't know.
What to expect.
But yesterday when I came in actually Sunday, when I came into the event or came into the venue to get the booth set up, get our equipment set up and everything, I was surprised by the number of vendors. I come to find out that there's over four hundred
and forty vendors. They are paying for this, they are sponsoring this, and this is an opportunity at this tech tech Rodeo of where Rush Enterprises brings together all their different technicians MCANX and they've expanded this into not only people in the collision center, but also the leasing, the parts department, the sales department, all different aspects of their business coming into what they call their Skills Rodeo to show their skills through certain testing, written tests.
And the qualifications even.
To get here, and then they test their skills while they're here and award the prizes. And it's absolutely remarkable. Now where we are located, it's amazing because we're right at the beginning, right in the front. Kind of set
the stage for you. Right across from us is a display from International Truck and a little bit over as Peter Bilt, I look up the aisle here I can see Azuzu, and I see Lucas Oil, and I see some of the other vendors, and we'll probably talk about them over the next couple of days because we're here. We're here today, we'll be here Tom and the the actual well actually, since this is running at night, we were there actually Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and then at Tuesday
night they we'll have the various awards ceremony. Uh So it's it's been a lot of fun up to this point.
Kind of let me set the stage.
For you how we got here, because they say, you know the old saying showing up is half the battle. Well it was more than half the battle. Uh you know, having to pack up everything to bring it to the show, and making sure that you know when you're traveling but making sure that I had all the recording equipment and everything set up so that we could actually do the
show from here. That was interesting, but you know, we've done it before, We've gone down to Mats and kind of figured we had a handle on it, but of course you have to throw the wrinkle into it. On Saturday when we drove down, we what we had what three weather emergencies or weather advisories we nugain in between the week left in between what was an advisory one and Advisory two. And on our way down here we stopped for dinner and I think we had Advisory three
on the way as well. But getting to the and I got to tell you, if you've never been to the Gaylord opper Land Resort and Convention Center, it is
just absolutely amazing. All under one roof the amount of the convention center, of the floor space, and just the venue itself for the resort hotel, all the amenities that you can imagine they have this They have actually two atriums and the it's kind of well, it's basically the rooms are set up as a horseshoe if you will, or brackets and the balconies all look over this courtyard and one is the restaurant area and there's water features and so on, and then another one that's actually this
canal that runs through and that you can actually take a little boat ride through and see the entire the entire area. Walking around, you go down these different corridors and it's not just a hotel, but you go down to this area between the two atriums and there's a whole bunch of shops.
You actually feel like you're.
Walking through a city and walking through city streets and doing a window shopping and seeing all the different different shops on either side and all the stuff that's available.
And of course they have all.
The amenities in terms of spas and all that sort of thing, which is amazing. But coming in on it was kind of an interesting scheduling process. We got in on Saturday, kind of late because of the delays and a little bit of snow delay and whatever. But Sunday they had the venue where a lot of the vendors
were getting set up. But at the same time they also have the beginning of the competition, and so they had the body shop competition over in Smyrna Tech, Tennessee, which is about a twenty twenty twenty five minute drive from here, and since it's part of the competition, I wanted to drive over and see that, and so getting the directions for that, and then going to watch that and seeing them compete, and then trying to time it so that I got back here in order to set
the booth up and everything. And then we had a cruise last night on the General Jackson that was again sponsored by Rush Truck Centers, Dinner and Entertainment. It's about a four hour cruise I think it was from start to finish by the time he got on the boat. And again, if you've not been down to Nashville and tried that, of course I wouldn't suggest doing it.
What was attempt last night?
It started out I think at eighteen degrees and by the time we got off the boat it was five with a windchill factor in the minus figures, So not a whole lot of time spent out on the deck and taking pictures. But you'd run out there and try to take a couple of pictures of the scenery and drown through the downtown Nashville area and try to get some of those pictures, but then run back in and wore them up. A little bit and run back out and try to get a few more pictures.
But it was a lot of fun crews.
But yesterday Sunday morning, I got up and I went over to the Collision center again down in Smyrna, Tennessee. And the way they set this up is they have two basic competitions. They have the competition of the repair and then the painting process. And in the collision department they had a fender, a fiberglass fender that had two of the corners broken off and holes punched in them in that period of time. As far as the competition, you have to fill the hole, square the thing off,
get it polished and then ready to be painted. And watching these people again it's not something I've ever watched before. But the sponsor, one of the sponsors of the competition,
three M products. They were here and it's interesting to see the judges walking around with their clipboards and looking at any all the individual stations where these people were working and talking to the people afterwards, they were saying it was a little nerve wracking again if they've only done it, if it is their first time, but some of the people that have been here before, it's not so challenged or not so intimidating, because as you're working
and you're doing something, you got somebody walking by and they're looking at what you're doing, and they're writing something on a note, or they're doing check marks or something like that. You're going, well, what are they looking at you? What are they seeing? What are they not? So it's fascinating for it's really fascinating from that aspect. And as they were describing to me, I had the opportunity to
talk to Mitch Davison. He is head of the collision department for Rush Trucks Center, and we'll have him on over the sometime over the next couple of days to talk to him. But how the three m people will go through and there is they will judge on approach, how they repair, how they go about because apparently on the repair of these holes and stuff, there's a couple of different methods or ways that you can do that. So they judge them based on the what selection they made,
and then of course their technique of putting it together. Now, on the paint side, they had two fenders that were there that they were repairing or not repairing, but painting, and to see them buff the thing out, do the prime and then they had colors to choose from and they were going to then do the colors of the
individual fenders and they talked about that. They had to make sure that well, one of the things is they could put striping on it, so you could put a design, and they told them, well, time permitting, be as creative as you want, because that will be part of the judging process. And so seeing the technicians work on those and how they're looking at that and how they're approaching that, polishing it and so on. It was. It was very
interesting and I don't know who's going to win. They haven't announced that yet, but they've got the semi finalists, some of the lists there. But the competition is just intense and the number of people involved. And we've got a couple of interviews coming up. We're going to be talking with Jody Pollard in the next segment. Jody Pollard is the senior vice president of the senior vice president Vehicle Aftermarket Sales and Rob Nixon, vice president of sales.
We've talked to them, talk about the talk to them on this program before and then to finish up, we're going to be talking with Chris Purcell. He was the Grand Champion winner last year and in twenty twenty one, and hopefully he wants to try to repeat this year. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's truck In Network seven hundred WLW.
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Trico aftermarket sales and Rob Nixon, VP of Sales. If you listen to America's Trucking Network before, you know we've talked to these two gentlemen before, usually by phone, but actually here at the twentieth anniversary of the Rush Enterprises Tech Skills Rodeo, we actually get to do this in person, which is really a thrill for.
This is great and here for us to do this in person.
It is now.
I think we spoke a couple of years ago at the MATS.
Conference when we were given the truck away. Yeah, that was a pretty unique event.
That was quite an event.
Yeah, now so far, this being my first time here, this blows me away. The dedication of Rush Enterprises to this end of the business and the amount of time, effort, money put into this because you described that last night very well, so kind of go through that with us a little bit.
Yes, people, twenty years ago, right here in Nashville, Tennessee, we started our first tech Skills rodeo. It really was just primarily focused on our technicians. We thought about it, how do you recruit somebody to come work for you, but also how do you retain them and then incentivize them to do all the training and to really hone their skill set throughout the year. And we said, you know, a tech rodeo might be the way to solve for that.
So that's where it all originated within the thought process because we knew technicians are very hard to attract and to keep inside your business, and they're the heartbeat of the dealership. So that's how the rodeo kind of started in concept and theory and we put it in action.
It's crazy what it's turned into.
Now.
We we really kind of touch every point of sale person We had our dealership parts of personnel, after market sales reps, obviously.
Technicians that evolved.
We just you know, when you start off with the tech Skills rodeo, you've got the people in the service department. Then I guess a natural natural evolution of that would be maybe the collision center. I don't know if that body shop personnel. And then all of a sudden, I guess maybe it was was it was it pressure from the other members of the team and say, well, hey, what about our skills, let us get involved from the sales, leasing and.
All that great question.
We even dropped technicians skills rodeo, that's what it was.
Originally.
We dropped it to just tech because of the technical attributes of every single person that compete here at the rodeo. And the reason really was we tried to understand, hey, we had this one particular purpose in mind on how you retain technicians, but how do we use this as an overall engagement event for employees that may not necessarily
get the recognition that they need every single day. And really it's about their enrichment of their career and that they have a place that they can feel like is going to invest in them for a bounty full career. So parts of people were you know, parts of people are pretty unique individuals. They got to be accurate one hundred percent of the time, or a lot of things downstream don't get right right, So that's well, let's recognize them. Let's make sure that they we recognize the best of
the best collision. Have you've seen some of this work here at the show. These guys are masterpieces on how they do collision and paintwork. And then we talked about our overall purpose as a company, how can we incorporate the real mission behind what we do? And at Rush Enterprises, you know we have a purpose. It's to keep the global economy up and running by committing to our customers
that we give them the maximum amount of uptime. And so we bought our salespeople a part of that process well as well, because it's a real culture thing here at Rush. And probably what you've witnessed Kevin over the last twenty four hours is people love this rodeo. I mean they they get really excited about it. And there's obviously some unique things that are going to happen on Tuesday night. We potentially can crown a new champion. I saw you talk to Chris Purcell a few minutes ago,
and he's all about the rodeo. Really humble guy, very talented technician, but I mean the first time he won, he won over sixteen thousand dollars in cash and prizes. That's a life changing event. Oh yeah, especially in a time of year where you know, you could use a little extra cash on Christmas time. And what's unique why we called it the rodeo is because really the time
frame you see everybody wearing Western attire here. It's like our little version of the NFR, you know, So the National Finals Rodeo.
And so on Tuesday night we'll.
Give out two hundred and eighty eight thousand dollars to our employees and in twenty years of doing that, that will eclipse the three million dollar mark. And making sure our employees know that they are our most important asset and we try to treat them with the respect and dignity and a job. A lot of times it just gets forgotten. So that's what this thing is all about. I'm really proud to be a part of it. Russy's extremely enthusiastic about this event, and everybody who works on
this committee they have regular jobs too. They really throw their heart and soul and making sure that our employees have a grand time. And lastly, it's really a way to bridge the relationships and partnerships with our suppliers, you know, we're pushing their products every day and a lot of times that knowledge is transferred here at the rodeo and what new product lines are out there, so we can go tell our customers the next thing that they're on the horizon with the product lines.
We're speaking with Jody Pollard, he is a senior vice president Vehicle Aftermarket Sales, and we're gonna be talking roun event, but this aspect of it, and we mentioned that you mentioned the individual of suppliers. The fact that their participation in this and the various displays around here is mind boggling because you know, when I walked in, I didn't know what to expect and it was beyond the expectations that I had yesterday filling and setting up the station.
And looking around everything.
Now, this is not cheap to put this on and for people that you know they sounds tech rodeo and this sort of thing. Now, there is a lot of planning, there's a lot of investment, and there's a lot of logistics and a lot of money involved in this.
Yeah, and again, yeah, this is not cheap. And moving it to Nashville to kind of commemorate the twentieth annivers had its own logistical challenges. And obviously you you plan for these things a year round, but this one you had to plan about four years in advance. And you know, the trucking industry has had a little bit of challenges this past year, so it was extremely nervous in terms
of how we could fund this event. So I put my best timeshare salesman had on and UH went to talk to our suppliers and they have just completely amazed me. They floored me in terms of they believe in this Rodeo two and they stepped up in every tremendous amount of way to make sure that we we had a really good event. And UH we fully funded by the suppliers, fully funded, fully funded. And the thing that I would tell you is like the unique connection we bring every
single aftermarket sales rep to Nashville. There are four hundred in our company, and so for them, that's the value because they get to touch to every they get to touch and talk to every single after market sales rep about their product line.
So that's the real.
Value that we brought in about seven years ago and making sure that every single aftermarket sales rep is here and we have a sales conference even on Sunday. You didn't get to witness that, but eight am on Sunday we have a sales conference and we're challenging them on how you know, they can meet our strategic objectives in this year and beyond.
That's incredible.
But this event, it's like seven events in one and you'll see tonight it's a pretty cool event to where we bring who will be competing tomorrow in the finals. You know they're all testing right now, but who's going to be the finalist to go after the big money on Tuesday gets announced tonight, So it's always a special time.
Okay, let's bring Robin here and we'll introduce him and then we'll transition to the next segment because we're getting up against a little bit of a break here. So Rob Nixon, VP of Sales, I want to talk a little bit about.
Yeah, I'll just you know, really add to what Jodi spoke about.
We're on the trade show floor right now where we've brought in all of our suppliers and vendors, and at RUSH, we really pride ourselves as being product solutions providers. You know, if I'm an aftermarket salesperson and I'm calling on a customer and they've got something unique or they need a product solution, We've got to learn about that product.
So it gives us.
An opportunity to gain product knowledge, meet our suppliers so that we've got personal relationships with them and we really know who's who so that we can better serve our customers. So in total, you know, there's four hundred and forty aftermarket salespeople here that includes our That's.
Why I was curious about how many people are involved.
Four and forty.
So imagine, folks, You've got technicians from around the country coming here to compete, and you've got four hundred and forty vendors that support this right that bring their equipment and their stuff here for people to compete. And the cost of this thing is three million dollars.
Yep, we'll have to.
Pick this up on the other side of the break let that sink in free putting the the just the sheer volume of this alone is incredible.
Yeah, it is a big annual event, and it's really you know, the one time per year that we get to bring everybody together, and it gives us an opportunity to not only talk about our results prior year, but really what we're focused on is the future.
What a strategy.
What are we trying to accomplish at RUSH as an aftermarket sales team? And so you know my expectations, and I know they did. They'll walk out of this event and they understand.
Stop right, sure what they expect when we come back.
Okay.
I'm Kevin Gordonmericus Tructing Network seven hundred WLW.
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The President comments on the latest school shooting, seemingly placing the blame on the school. If you're twelve thirty reports, I'm Ley mawin breaking now. No arrest have be made from the shooting at Brown University, where two students were killed nine others injured. ABC News White House correspondent Karen Travers got the latest comments from President Donald Trump.
President Trump said he didn't know the motive of the shooter at Brown University this weekend. He spoke about the investigation with reporters in the Oval Office.
We're going to see what happens. Hopefully they're going to capture this animal.
Asked whether the f behind Director Cash Pttel had told him why it's been so difficult to find the suspect. The President said, quote, it's always difficult and seem to put the blame on Brown. Karen Travers, ABC News, The White House.
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It won't be quite as cold Tuesday morning, but still pretty rough out there as we dropped down to seventeen degrees Tuesday afternoon, some bigger improvements. Highs will be near thirty seven with a lot of sunshine helping him out away more of that weekend snow, and then it won't be as cold Wednesday morning, only dropping down to thirty two. From your severe weather station, I'm night First Warning meter Ale the just Mark Stitz here is Radio seven hundred WLW.
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A group of elderly, low income tenants made their voices heard on proposed rent increases of the Victoria Visit disapartments. Now they're getting a small temporary reprieve, building owner Kingsley and Company announcing a deal until at least March that maintains current rents with no addictions planned. Eleven tenants in a low income program faced rent increases of over one
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Here's our trucking forecast for the Try State and the rest of the country and the Try sit Overnight skies clearing the low down to seventeen sunny Tuesday high of thirty seven. Wednesday mostly Claudie Sky's becoming sunny, highs in the lower forties. Afternoon rain Thursday, a high of fifty three nationally into Tuesday. Heavy snow seen in the Great Lakes region over parts of the coastline along Lakes Erie
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Seven hundred WLW. I'm Kevin Gordon. This is America'strucking Network. Continue our conversation with Jody Pollard, Senior Vice President Vehicle Aftermarket Sales and Rob Nixon, VP of Sales and pre Before the break, we were talking about the different aftermarket people that are here and the events, and then what you want them to come away with and what you guys want to come away with too.
Yeah, sure it again, it's in a great event where you know, primarily we get to initially talk about the environment we're in and you know, I've been on your show before and we talked about that it's still an inflationary environment. And we get to review those numbers and really we get to we get to the core of what is the sentiment of our customer and quite frankly, you know, we feel like they're getting squeezed. They're always consistently looking at their maintenance costs and how do they
do that? So, you know, I hope all of our aftermarket salespeople leave this event really strategically looking at our primary two initiatives, and that is one we want to drive more value to our customers. We think they need it, you know, with five percent inflation this year, and it may roll up a little higher than that.
That's what expected in the industry.
In the industry, spricing just keeps going up, and so we think it's going up much faster than the number of miles driven per year.
So there's a little disk there.
There's a separation between what's it costing me to maintain my fleet versus my primary revenue running. If you just looked at it from a ratio standpoint, there's about a four percent disparity there. So we want to drive value as a company, and driving value is not always just about price. It's about alternatives as well. How do we as a company provide more value. And then secondly, it's about speed. We want to get faster as a company, and we want to get faster from a.
Part standpoint, just the basics.
You call in, you order a part, how quickly does it take me to get that to you the end user?
And well the important.
Thing about that too is how quickly you can get that to the end user against Rob Nixon, vice president of Sales, Obviously that part is needed for a truck that's down right, and if the truck is down, it's not on the road and generating right exactly. And so to speed up that process and to make sure that that is done on a very fast basis is extremely important, which then again is a value to the customer that you guys provide that maybe somebody else doesn't provide.
Absolutely, and speed to delivery all starts with Phil Rate, and Phil Rate is do I have the part on the shelf when you called me? So we've got to be really good at that before we ever start thinking about pulling the part, putting on a truck and dispatching that to the customer.
Well, and the overall concept of the number of parts and the availability of the parts that there are, you have to be very good of making sure that you have the right mix of parts.
That you can't stock everything.
No, I mean ince when you think of AI, that's typically what you used in the industry to not only you've sold it to reorder and making certain you've got not just the right part, but the quantity on hand in the shelf. And you know, at Rush we still carry over four hundred million dollars in parts inventory across one hundred.
And fifty seven locations. So speed is it for part, it's delivery.
And when we think about service, this is where strategically we want to continue to expand our mobile service operations. And so why is that so important mobile service because speed equals dwell time lowered for our customer. So without a doubt, if I can come to the customer versus them coming to me, we can cut that dwell time in half. So we think our customers expectations just continue to want faster service, faster repair. We talked about it.
If it's not running, they're not generating revenue, so out.
Of time we cut them back.
And the timing of that mobile service could actually be when they're on their downtime, so it's not necessarily taking them off the road. There may be a brake system or you know, the hours of service, and they may be off at a particular time, and if the mobile service can get to them and then take care of it, then it's a win win because they're not off the road technically right for any long period of time, and there's truck is serviced and service well so it doesn't break down later on as well.
And when you think of that strategically trying to decrease the dwell time and speed, it's really it's about hours of operations.
When will you work, do you work weekends? Will you work grievyard shifts?
All those things, And really our mobile service team is geared up to do those things. They're working less traditional hours than our brick and mortar technicians on the yard. So anyway, they've got a great skill set. So many of them are here with us today. I'll have a great time interacting with them tonight and tomorrow. But we value those technicians and they help us meet our strategic in we want value and we want speed for our customers.
Oh and you guys provided for sure.
Because I know a lot of people that I talk to from time to time in the business. They're always raving about rush truck centers. They're talking about how.
Good it is.
So before we get out of here, one of the things we need to talk about, and we're talking with and now with Jodi Pollard, Senior vice president Vehicle after Market Sales, is we've got some emission standards, emission changes coming up with the first of the year.
Well it'll be a twenty twenty seven. So I mean we've talked multiple times this past year. I don't think too much has changed and respected the landscape of complexity that this year has brought for our industry, everything from interest rates to the general freight economy. I should start, I should start right there is the general freight economy due to just being too much capacity, but also you know, just the regulation uncertainty that has just happened to our industry.
And there was a lot of clear things that were made with the Trump administration, with the ev mandate going away.
There's been a lot of good work.
But in respect to what was the law of the land before the Trump administration was that we were going to get to thirty five milligram and Knox by twenty twenty seven. And I believe this the manufacturers as well as the EPA is going to keep that as the law of the land.
For your listeners, you know, I would just.
Tell you that there's a certainly amount of inventory on the ground that if you are making a truck purchase because your business requires it, you know this next calendar, you're you really need to contact the rush truck centers because you know this, you could get into a particular area where it's limited amount of allocation or some form of allocation leading into an emissions change in twenty twenty seven.
So we are already out there telling our fleets to start playing now, but sometimes the small to mid sized carrier guy doesn't necessarily know all this information. With each technology change, the first you know, bad out of the box, if you will, has its set of challenges. Always new products had its set of challenges, and I'm not speaking fearedom in any stretch of the imagination, but we know the product or what it is today and how it performs.
So if you are trying to make business decisions based on capital deployment on buying new trucks, you really need to start thinking about doing that right now because it could get very tight in the second half of twenty twenty six leading into twenty twenty seven when the emission change does happen.
Well, of course, you know there's a there's a timeframe, and I mean, if you have to place the order, the company needs to know how many they have to manufacture and then plan for people coming in at the last minute.
Type of thing.
So and certainly it you know this industry in your customers or excuse me, your listeners. It's been a challenging year out there, and you know they're probably put.
Off the truck sale or truck buying for a while now.
And you know, there's a lot more miles that are on trades that we're seeing right now. Six hundred thousand mile trades were the traditional five hundred thousand miles or even that those three hundred thousand miles. So you've got to be pretty conscientious of that too by extending your mileage, because that resist becomes a factor when you go, you know, want to buy a new truck. So it's been a it's been a very what I would say, it's been a constant news cycle in the trucking industry right now.
But well, and the thing is that we've talked about in the past is that you guys are there not just to sell vehicles, but to actually educate them and work with your customers that to let them know what's going on and so that they can plan ahead and know where they need to be.
Yeah, for me, it's every week seems like I just made a comment about that news cycle. I am relearning things that I've already learned because I was a year ago talking about battery electric vehicles and this year I'm not talking about battery electric vehicles. I'm talking about thirty five milligram Knox. So yes, education is a very reliable source when you're making business decisions and the rules are getting a little bit more established, so you know how to plan for your fleet.
And so you know anybody out there that are looking to plan this www.
Dorush Truck Centers dot Com exactly and we can definitely serve your needs. We have plenty of inventory on the ground and we can always use one of our truck sales specialists to spec you as a specific truck.
Very good, Jody Polers, Thank you very much.
Jody Poler is good to be with you. Happy holidays.
Happy holidays to you too.
Vice Presidents of Vehicle Afromarket Sales and Rob Nixon, VP of Sales. Thank you guys both for stopping by and certainly appreciate it. I'm Kevin Bordon, America's struck In Network seven hundred Wlwright.
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Seven hundred WLW. I'm Kevin Gordon. This is America's struck A Network. I have the pleasure of speaking with Chris Purcell. We're at the Rush Enterprises twentieth Anniversary Tech Skills Rodeo, and well I have again Chris Purcell. Last year was the Grand Champion, already had done well.
Anyway, We'll leave it up to you. Tell us all about yourself, and I guess, sir.
I've been with Rush Truck Centers for twenty six years, been to the rodeo eight times. This is my last year, was my second time as Grand Champion, and I'm here competing again in the International Medium Duty Division and hoping to do it again.
But all I can do is try. Well, That's all you can do is do your best.
That's right now, looking back in terms of the competition, the eighth time, right that you competed, that's right. What's the difference between year one and I guess how many times did you compete before you won the first grand prize?
I believe it was six times competing before I won the Grand Champion the first time back in twenty twenty one, and that was actually virtual, so it was online.
A lot of it was question and answers.
There was a little bit of interactive diagnostics, you.
Know, over the computer.
Uh huh.
But yeah, one Grand Champion twenty twenty one.
Okay, so I guess I would obviously twenty twenty one. Having to be virtual is completely different than doing to the person.
Yeah, winning it in person was great.
Just the atmosphere we had, the camaraderie and everything that. I don't congratulating you, the cheers, the pictures, interviews afterwards.
I mean it was just a big deal.
Yeah, absolutely, that's that is I mean, well, being the top champion and anything is great, and the fact that this is one of those areas of expertise and so on.
So what was the competition like so far this year?
It's the same in the essence that they bug your truck, they don't give you any information. When the clock starts, they hand your work order, you got a customer complaint on there, and you go from there. Sometimes they're looking for procedures, sometimes they're looking for your knowledge, and you never know which path is the best.
To take uh huh? Now is okay? I mentioned that?
So is there a starting point or I guess everybody's a little different the way they approach things, or is it pretty much the same or if you.
Kind of take it from a shop environment, I mean you want to go by your knowledge to kind of fast track the diagnostic and repair. So based on the symptom you would want to tackle it off of, you know, your experience, where do you start? I'm going to check these few things first before I go to a manual or before I start a procedure.
Now, because in a lot of instances, I would assume that it's something that maybe you've encountered before.
Correct ye, And sometimes well a lot of times at the shop, there are a lot of things you do see repetitively. So yeah, you've seen this happen two or three times, so you're going to automatically go there to see if that's the failure and this it is?
How like going to the manual and saying, okay, step one, step two, step three, correct, I can skip all that because I've seen this before. I've heard about this before. Let's start at step five, six seven.
That's right, And in this environment, it may be something you've run across before, but it may not.
Uh huh.
The judges they figure out the bugs every year. They put the bugs on the truck for you to figure out.
I think that would be kind of an interesting task right there alone. Okay, how can we challenge these guys this year about this? By the way, I'm speaking with Chris Purcell. He is the grand champion last year and also in twenty twenty one, a service technician out of Atlanta and.
Joining us here.
So I guess, from the standpoint of the people setting this up, what could we complicate or what can we do to make this a little more challenging this year last year? How can we do this? I think that would be kind of a I.
Think it's this challenging itself, just just because of the unknown. Well, uh, your judge has a clipboard and he's got boxes he's marking off, and.
You have no idea what they are.
Uh huh, you don't know, like I said previously, if they're going for a knowledge or procedure. Oh okay, So as far as what they can do to make it more challenging, they do a really good job every year.
Well you know, you know, you look at I look at these things in terms of I don't know if you've watched any of the cooking shows or the cooking competitions where they have the judges, and from what I've noticed, it's not like that because in those instances, the judges will come around and they'll be asking the person questions and going, well, you know, why are you using this ingredient on this and you're trying to do this. They're
not supposed to interfere. They're just observing. And then you said, you don't know what they're observing or what they're asking, whether they're looking for on the procedural point, did he do this, this and this or the technique even correct.
We try to ask questions throughout and most of the time we either get most of the time the judges tell you I can't answer that, so they give no guidance.
Say you're on your own. You're on this sick Er swim, You're on your own. If you make it to day two competition.
It's a little bit different because you have to test on in my category, you test on an international and then a Peterbilt, and being an international technician, I'm familiar with Peterbilt.
They do kind of guide.
You as and they would ask you what would you do working on your product an international When you would describe that to them, they say, well, we got something similar to that.
So day two.
You get a little bit of.
Guidance when you're working on the unfamiliar product, but when you're working on your own product, there's no guidance.
It's just you do what you do.
Oh that's cool. Now let's get to you for a moment here.
Yeah, Chris Persall is the Grand Champion last year and also in twenty twenty one, hoping for a third champion chip this year. You've been with the company for fourteen years, you said, twenty six, twenty six, Oh my goodness, I'm sorry. Oh, there's somebody person right before you.
That was.
But so what got you in the got you into the business in the first place?
How did you come about?
Right to high school, I was working at automotive quickly places, changing oil, moved up to another place, did a little bit more as far as tune ups breaks and got a call that they were looking for an opening for electrical tech.
At that time, noally motor trucks.
And now there's a fairly large Automotive group in the Atlanta area, and I worked there started worked there in ninety nine and I'm still the same location. But Rush purchased Nally's truck side through an acquisition in twenty eleven, so I've been at the same location since nineteen ninety nine.
Wow, that's great.
So in terms of you wanted to get into that industry right from the start.
I think it.
You get that sense of accomplishment for making repairs. I've got the curiosity wanting to know why something failed, why something works.
I always had that.
That's kind of along the lines of, I guess the engineering brain type of thing where people always want to figure out how something works, how it's put together, how it you know, why it's not working, how it works, and dig into that.
Right in our industry, you know, sometimes you run across a lot of repeat failures because nobody ever found the root cause of what issue was, uh huh. And I get a lot of that in my shop. If something's been to this shop, that shop, or even at our shop a time or two, then it ends up in my lap to figure out why it keeps happening and make sure it doesn't happen again.
Oh, that's great.
So in terms of this year, as far as the competition is concerned, stuffer competition or can you even tell?
At this you see a lot of the same faces year after year, and you know everybody that makes.
It here is a good technician.
Uh huh.
The repeat competitors, I mean, you know that they've got a leg up on the guys that's never been here before.
H huh. They kind of know.
Well, you guys know what to expect when you come in, and so it's not a culture shock for you exactly.
It's it's a different experience every time.
The nerves never go away, but at least as opposed to a newcomer, the season techs that's been here numerous times, they know what to expect, so they're a little bit more of a challenge, I would say, even though you don't know what your score is compared to somebody else's.
Again, we're talking with Chris Purcell.
He is the past Grand champion in twenty twenty one and last year and hopefully again this year. One final question for you, any advice for anybody interested in getting into this area? What can you recommend? What do you you know? How do you suggest people get involved.
If you're looking to get into the heavy duty truck repair aspect as a technician. There are a lot of trade schools out there, and RUSH has a great program as an entry level. After you've graduated trade school, they've got an entry level mentor program that they'll bring you in and it's a great head start.
Uh huh.
And so again, and I've seen it seems that with the younger people that are getting a little bit more interested in the trades than they have been in the past. I don't know if just a feeling on my part or we're actually seeing.
It, it seems that way.
I mean, I don't know if it's got anything to do with the expense of going to college for their aspects. I mean, there are trade schools related to this industry, and I'm sure that comes with the calls, but maybe it's not as much.
Of them now, exactly right. And that's a great career too.
It is very fulfilling too when you enjoy the you know, like I said, the satisfaction of making repairs getting trucks back on the road.
Well, fantastic best of luck to you, Chris. I certainly appreciate you stopping buy and all the best for the competition.
Thank you, Kevin.
It's nice mating again.
Chris Purcell is the grand champion in twenty twenty one, last year and hopefully again this year. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Truck and Network seven hundred w LWUS.
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