This week, we are excited to celebrate Technician Appreciation Week to recognize all of our service managers and technicians. We want to thank these team members for ensuring that our drivers have safe, well-maintained equipment and for keeping that equipment on the road with limited downtime, allowing our customers’ freight to be delivered on time.
Our maintenance team is critical to our operations. Without them, our trucks would stop running. And our customers’ loads wouldn’t get delivered. Ultimately, skilled technicians keep Ruan and the country moving.
During Technician Appreciation Week, we are also hosting our second Top Technician Competition, an opportunity to highlight our technicians’ skills and mastery of the industry’s latest diagnostic tools and technologies. Please join us in congratulating the following technicians with the highest scores from our online skills assessment, who will be in Des Moines, IA, later this week for our competition:
- James Wheetley, Cedar Falls, IA
- Jason Shultz, Fontana, CA
- Devin Hoskins, Gastonia, NC
- Shane Riffe, Phoenix, AZ
- Thomas Soltermann, Terre Haute, IN
- Brian Gill, Sellersburg, IN
- Alex Maynard, Jefferson, GA
- Mitchell Engelkes, Cedar Falls, IA
- Joseph McClung, Chester, VA
- Nohemi Estrada, San Antonio, TX
The Top Technician Competition is being conducted in cooperation with Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC), the Iowa Motor Truck Association (IMTA), and several of our suppliers. The technician competition will be made up of 10 separate skills stations:
- Brakes – sponsored by Meritor
- Preventative Maintenance Inspections – sponsored by Ruan
- Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) – sponsored by Truck Country
- Liftgates – Sponsored by Maxon
- Tire and Wheels – sponsored by Bridgestone
- Warranty and VMRS coding – sponsored by Ruan
- Electrical – sponsored by Purkey’s Electric
- Wheel End – sponsored by Stemco
- Diagnostics – sponsored by Noregon
- Fasteners – sponsored by Imperial Supply
Using the scores from the 10 hands-on skills stations, an overall score will be used to determine the first, second, and third place finishers, who will be announced at an awards banquet on the evening of July 12. The first place finisher will also be recognized at our Driver and Operation of the Year ceremony next week. In addition to receiving Ruan recognition, the top three technicians will also be invited to represent Ruan in the American Trucking Associations’ (ATA) national technician competition hosted by the Technology and Maintenance Council (TMC) later this year in Raleigh, NC.
We look forward to this exciting week and the opportunity to focus our attention on the important work that our technicians do every day. Again, we thank our technicians and service managers. Please know that our entire company honors you this week—and every week—for the role you play in keeping our drivers safe and getting our customers’ freight from point A to point B.
Happy Technician Appreciation Week!