The Heavy Duty Parts Report
Each week Jamie Irvine and his guests have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. They discuss tips, tools, and technology that help heavy-duty parts manufacturers and distributors sell the right parts to fleets, repair shops, and truck operators.
The Heavy Duty Parts Report
Take Advantage of Training by Horton
Episode 330: In this episode we talk training – why it is so necessary, ways to make it accessible to employees and customers, and why some companies refuse to train their people. Our host, Jamie Irvine, starts by discussing 3 myths that some believe about training – namely that it is too expensive, not worth the time, or that it is inaccessible to their company.
Our featured guest is Thomas Kleich, Director of Sales for Fleets at Horton. He discusses the need that he saw for good training and what they have done at Horton to make easily accessible training materials available, not just for themselves and their customers, but to whoever wants it.
Show Notes: Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com for complete show notes of this episode and to subscribe to all our content.
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Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation: Find out how many “fault codes” your heavy-duty parts business has. Meet with us today. Visit HeavyDutyConsulting.com
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You're listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. Welcome to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin. In this episode, we are going to talk about the importance of training. We're going to interview Thomas Kleich from Horton and discuss their training programs that are going to save you time and money, and we're going to end the discussion in this episode discussing the high cost of refusing to train your employees. Let's get started. At the Heavy-Duty Consulting Corporation, we provide training for our clients and we think this is very, very important.
Jamie Irvine:I want you to think just for a minute about a professional athlete Now. A professional athlete will actually spend more time training than they do actually playing the game. Now, when we think about in the business world, it's just the opposite, isn't it? We spend most of our time working in our day-to-day jobs, in other words, playing the game, and most of us, especially as we get older, spend less and less time training. Now, we understand that in business, you can't train to the same level as a professional athlete does, but it doesn't mean that training isn't important and should never happen. In fact, it's quite the opposite, and there are several myths that we continuously hear when we're talking to people in the heavy-duty parts and service industry, and I wanted to go over a couple of those with you. So the first myth that we hear quite a bit is we don't have the time. All our employees are so busy. Now it's not so much that this is an inaccurate statement, but I think it just misses the whole point. If you're that busy and you don't take time to train your employees, you're not helping them become more productive. So if your employees are already overworked, providing them with training will actually help them become more productive and get more done with the limited resources they have at their disposal. So by kind of believing this idea that we're too busy to do training, you're just, over time, making the problem so much worse.
Jamie Irvine:The second thing we hear quite regularly and I guess you could put this in the category of a myth is this idea that we can't afford to take people off the front line to provide them with training. So what they're basically saying is look, we just can't afford to send people away for training. Now this is a problem because, again, training and productivity are so closely connected. A study published in the Review of Economics and Statistics found that on-the-job training had an impact on productivity and improved retention with employees at a higher degree than wage increases alone. So it may be true that you can't necessarily afford to send someone away for training right now. You know travel expenses days away from the business. That part might be true, but the general idea that you can't afford it completely misses the idea of on-the-job training. We're going to talk a little bit more at the end of the episode about how there's been a significant decline in on-the-job training and the impact that's having. So make sure you listen to the end for that.
Jamie Irvine:The third myth that we hear all the time is only large-scale companies have access to the resources to properly train their people. Another thing that we often hear is well, if you work at a dealership or you're part of an OEM, you have access to all kinds of resources, but if you work on the independent service channel or the aftermarket parts side of the business, you don't have any resources. Now, that might have been more true in the past, but really it's becoming less and less true today. Now I will not disagree with you. The OEMs and the dealerships do have access to certain things that the, and inside of that there are courses that will help you at the leadership level, the management level and on the front line in your parts and service business, and this is all part of your membership fee that makes you part of that buying group, so there's no additional cost to get access to all of this great training. On the other side of that equation is the suppliers, and we consistently see distributors independent parts distributors underutilizing the training made available by suppliers. And so in today's episode we are going to have one of those suppliers on.
Jamie Irvine:I interview them, thomas Kleik from Horton and he's going to talk about all the investment they've made in their training programs and how it's available to everyone. So before the interview, let's just take a quick moment to hear from our sponsors. We'll be right back. Are you deferring maintenance because of filter cost or availability? Or, worse yet, are you trading down to no-name filters to try to save a few bucks? Either way, you're rolling the dice. The good news there's a new premium filter option for fleets Hanks Filtration. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hanks filters will save you. But you've got to go to heavydutypartsreportcom slash Hanks to find out more. That's heavydutypartsreportcom slash h-e-n-g-s-t Head there now At Diesel Laptops.
Jamie Irvine:They go way beyond diagnostic tools. They are your complete shop efficiency partner, from diesel technician training to complete repair information, parts lookup tools and robust technical support. They are there to support you every step of the way. Learn more and download your free starter pack today by visiting DieselLaptopscom. That's DieselLaptopscom. Hca Truck Pride is the heart of the independent parts and service channel. They have 750 parts stores and 450 service centers, conveniently located across the US and Canada. Visit heavydutypartsreportcom slash hdatruckbride today to find a location near you. Again. That's heavydutypartsreportcom. Slash hdatruckbride and let the heart of the Independent Service Channel take care of your commercial equipment.
Jamie Irvine:We're back from our break. Before the break, we were talking about some of the myths that seem to persist when it comes to training in the heavy-duty parts and service industry. One company that is working hard to make training available is Horton, and they are our featured guest in this episode. My guest today is Tom Klike. He is the Director of Sales and he takes care of fleets at Horton Now. Tom started his career as an auto diesel technician and he was hired at Horton originally in a technical support for customer service role, but he's been with the company now for over 37 years. He started in 1987. He's progressed through a number of different roles, which include marketing, product management, oem sales, director of OEM sales, and now he's the director of fleet sales.
Jamie Irvine:So, tom, welcome to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here, glad to be here. So, tom, when I think about Horton, I think about the fan clutches you manufacture, I think about engine cooling solutions. You now have heavy duty electric solutions. Those are the products that come to mind when I think about Horton. Of course, when you sell a product, there's so much more to it than just manufacturing and selling the product, and so what I was wondering if you could do is if you could tell us of a situation that is common with your customers and what's happening with them, and then we'll talk about what Horton's doing to help them with that situation.
Thomas Kleich:Yeah. So on the fleet side, the old buzzword uptime is everything right. I mean, if that truck goes down, that's their livelihood right. That's how the fleets make money. That's that's how they deliver the goods, that's how they their reputation. They're just looking for products and services and companies that basically can partner with them, support them. The price is going to work well. If something does happen there, they know that they've got somebody to take care of them and they can get that truck up and running as quickly as possible.
Jamie Irvine:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, but you know I'd like to go a little deeper than that. So in your particular category, when things go wrong, kind of paint the picture of what happens.
Thomas Kleich:Well, when things go wrong, the fleet managers are on the hook, right, the director of maintenance, the VP of maintenance, fleet managers, technicians. They're doing everything they can to get that truck up and running. And the trucks are so complex now. There's so many different components. They have to know so many different things. And even within just a component like a fan drive, there's multiple fan drives that you mentioned earlier. There's pneumatics, there's variable speed, viscous, there's electromagnetic, there's high voltage, like there's all kinds of technology out there. And for them to know you know what's on their truck at any given time and how to repair that or get that truck back up and run, it's very difficult for that, that fleet yeah, and I think you're right.
Jamie Irvine:When people say, like uptime is everything they don't like, we just say that quickly, but when you actually think about the situation, so OK, let's, let's paint the picture. We have a truck, it's got a load, that load has to be delivered. At a certain time it goes out into the, into the field, and it breaks down. If that breakdown is caused because someone chose a product that's cheap but not high quality, or if it's not a product that's been matched to the vocation correctly, those are avoidable problems. And then you start to think about it. Who's affected? It starts with the driver.
Jamie Irvine:Right, they're on the side of the road. There's danger there. They want to get home to their family every night. They don't want to have to be stuck there on the side of the road. There's the mechanic that has to go and try to diagnose the problem and fix it. You mentioned the fleet directors and the maintenance and technicians that were responsible for maintaining that vehicle. When I think, when I put all that all together, there's so many people involved. Their livelihoods are involved. There's stress there, and so, in order to try to alleviate that, what steps have Horton taken to try to provide your customers with everything they need to avoid those situations.
Thomas Kleich:Well, I looked at it from a practical standpoint. So, I mentioned earlier, we really try to focus on our products and our customers, right? And it's like how do you do that, how do you help your customer do that? And as I started doing this job, I've been doing the fleet job for about three years now and it became apparent and with my technical background too, I struggle with some of these things as well. As I mentioned earlier, so many different technologies, so many different technologies, so many different things to know. It's like how can we make it easier for them and provide the tools that they need to keep them trained on the specific technology that they happen to be running.
Thomas Kleich:So I tried to come up with a kind of a simple solution. Right, everyone says, well, we love training. Right, can you come and train? Well, I'm one person, I'm one national fleet person that does the whole country and Canada. I can't be there, right, and once you do go in and train, it's great. I love the in-person training. Most technicians are hands-on, visual type learners that's how I am, so it's great to do. But as soon as I leave the door, there's another tech walking in the other door the new tech and you just can't keep up.
Thomas Kleich:So I thought to myself, how do I make this simple? How do I actually go through the different technologies and really focus on what they're running? And I started coming up with some tools and it's kind of like the YouTube thing. I like working on my own stuff and a lot of people use YouTube, right, some of the stuff's good, some of it's bad, but it's a reference point, right. You go to YouTube, you can look at that and say, okay, yeah, I even YouTube stuff that I know how to do because there might be something different, right, a different vehicle, right, might be a different technique or something easier that I didn't know. So I thought, well, why not put our videos and training videos out on YouTube? Right.
Thomas Kleich:But then I said, you know a step further. Why not actually put it into a piece of literature that I can give them and laminate it and give it to technicians so they can look at that very easily and say, okay, product comes in. If it's pneumatic, got an air leak, what do I do right? Uh, it's got, you know, friction materials, whatever, what do I do right? And it steps them right through that horton's got that.
Thomas Kleich:I've got this piece of literature that I did laminate and it's got qr codes on it so they can actually scan the qr code and see the video. So it takes, takes them. You know it's all there. They don't have to go to YouTube, they just kind of look at the literature. They can keep it in their toolbox. Okay, I'm going to scan this. It's going to take, you know, 10 minutes. Watch the video and they're ready to go Right.
Thomas Kleich:So I've tried to do more of that. And then we said, okay, what if we tie that into like an LMS training, so that we can actually have a system that we can send out a link to them and that could be like the VP of maintenance, director of maintenance or whatever, or they're training people and they can send that link to the technicians and the technicians that, you know, on their own time they can take that training and it has, so again, a 10 minute video they can. There's about six or seven questions they need to answer. You know they don't need to get them all right, because it'll tell them what the answer is and it's just really trying to train them and focus on what they're running and they'll go through that and at the end of it. They get a certificate and they'll actually get that email to them and they can print that out and give it to the boss or, you know, just keep it themselves.
Jamie Irvine:So yeah, and one of the things that I've seen over the last couple of years that I find personally a little concerning is I've seen some people basically have the attitude of like we're so busy in the shop we don't have time for training, but let's break down the cost of a mistake with one of your products. So walk me through that, Like what have you seen happen when things go wrong and what did that kind of cost the customer or the fleet?
Thomas Kleich:Well, I got a few of those examples. So not too long ago I got a call from one of my good customers and he said hey, tom, I got a truck down, happened to be right around the corner from where we're at in Roseville, minnesota here, and I said hey, joe, let me go check it out Again. It was a pneumatic product, had an air leak. He said they're telling me my truck's going to be down for two weeks and they have to order the part. They can't get the part and I said it's probably just a simple air cartridge or something. So I went over there and I happened to have a part here and I told the technicians and the dealership you did, but you're the man. I said it's nothing, I'm the man, it's simple, you know, I knew what to do. Now, if you can tell that technician what to do and that's why I mentioned like it's not only technicians but it's call centers too, because their truck is a dealership they call them and say, hey, this is what we need to do, and most dealers kind of go to over-repair right away. Well, we're going to put a brand new fan drive on it and this is what it's going to cost you and that's expensive. I mean compared to like just putting a simple seal kit or a cartridge in it, and those call centers are trained and know what to do. It's like what's happening with the product Air leak, do this right, and if they had that literature and they had the training they can actually show the dealer that. Then the dealer can be trained. Then I've actually, for that same customer, I've actually called dealers and walk through it and and actually saved them a whole bunch of money by doing that.
Thomas Kleich:Yeah, so that's one example. The other, the other example I was going to tell you, is over repair, right, that's that's. You know, I talked about that a little bit. But we have the one on the variable speed side. That's a newer technology. Technicians are very uncomfortable with it and there's a lot of electronics involved and things like that ECM controls, and we have a variable speed RCX product that we have and a lot of times what I see is wires come loose, connections come loose and it's got a code on a controller that we have that flashes red and green. The technician in this case replaced the fan drive, the controller, the jumper, harness, everything. Just to say I'm just going to do it all because I know that's going to work. Well, it works, you know. But then you've got this big bill sitting there and a lot of times it won't be covered under warranty because they'll say you over-repaired it. All it needed to do is fix the wire. It would have been good to go so again, if they have the training it just makes things so much simpler.
Jamie Irvine:Yeah, so you've taken this complex subject. You've broken it down into these simple like one page or two page. You know front and back. You've got the QR codes and the videos made. It helps these technicians to understand what to do. When you think about the impact this has on their day-to-day experience with your product, how do you think it impacts their opinion of your company?
Thomas Kleich:Well, I think you know the more comfortable they are with something I know I am. If I can comfortably do it and I know when that thing comes in I can repair it. You know we have like one seal kit that fits every one of our pneumatic products. So you have seal kit on the shelf. There's no excuse why that truck wouldn't be up and running that same day or within an hour. You know, a couple hours at most. But so if they're comfortable with it, they see that. You know everybody. I think every product probably gonna have a problem at some point. Right, and it's. It's a matter of if you do have that problem, how can I fix very quickly? And if all my techs are trained the same way, it works just beautifully and they get the truck out. They don't have very many problems. But when you do, they know how to do it, they're comfortable.
Jamie Irvine:Right, and I think that the way that that impacts their opinion of your company is that they have this comfort level. They start to look to your company as like look, this is a company that has great products, they give me excellent support. And so they might move from one fleet to another or from one dealership to another or an independent repair shop. And when they do, they're going to say, hey, I want to use Horton, I want to use that product, I don't want to use anybody else's, because I know that they'll be there to take care of me and help me if there's something wrong. I think that goes a long way to justifying any cost that was incurred for creating that training material. Wouldn't you agree?
Thomas Kleich:Yeah, for sure, for sure, you know that's what you know. Maintenance managers tell me all the time it's like you know that's what I'm on the hook for is my costs and keep those trucks up and running, if you can help me with that. And we like to say I like to partner with fleets and I always tell them I said every fleet needs a fan drive guy. I want to be your fan drive guy and I said put me to the test, call my cell number. I give them my cell number, my emails, so if I'm on vacation our service manager Dale will take the calls for me. And we just want to make sure that the customer service is there. So if they do run into a snag and they can't get it with the training and things we provided, call us, we'll help you out. And they really appreciate that. And the ones that have done that really understand the value there. And they said you know, wish more suppliers would do that for us.
Jamie Irvine:Yeah, now you specifically are responsible for making sure fleets are taken care of, but your company as a whole still works through distribution. I'm also thinking of all those sales account managers that are calling on local customers. I'm thinking of the parts counter people, either at a dealership or aftermarket distributor. The better educated they are, the more they can help customers, and all of this education just makes things go so much better when, inevitably, something does go wrong.
Thomas Kleich:Yeah, correct, Correct. And the other thing we really pride ourselves is on our website as well. We've got a great product catalog website. We can. You can search by a full thin, see what product you need or part number or cross references from OE part numbers. So ours. We really try to work on that. We're updating that every day. We find something and we put it in there. So the customers, dealers, they can mention parts managers, they love that.
Jamie Irvine:Yeah, exactly. So we've started with the worst case scenario where you have a driver who's at risk on the side of the road, broken down, and we talked about the frustration that that causes for the director of fleet maintenance, because his or job is to keep these, this equipment rolling. The driver is in an unsafe position, the technician might be frustrated. They just fix that truck. Now they got to go out and fix it again. We go from that and a little bit of education Walk us through how all of that changes and the feelings that people have when they use this education and they're able to fix these problems easily.
Thomas Kleich:Well, I think you eliminate the frustration factor right. They're getting things coming at them all the time, right?
Thomas Kleich:And if they're well-trained, they've got the materials, they know what they're doing. Fan drive thing comes up like we know that one, we got that right. We, you know the tech, typically will have it, or they can walk them through, walk them through the dealers. Here's how. What I want you to do, here's the kit I want you to use. We kind of pride ourselves on like commonizing our products and having like one kit kind of fits everything, which makes it so much simpler for everybody. You can stock one thing the availability is really good. We've got, you know, 14 quick ship warehouses outside of what the OEPDCs and distributor warehouses have in stock. So important parts are everywhere. So there's really no excuse not to get that truck up and running and do it at a reasonably price and a quick time.
Jamie Irvine:Yeah, I think that that frustration level, equipment's becoming so much more complex, as you mentioned earlier, and we are living and working in a world that is far more dynamic than it ever has been before. There's so much coming at people and I think when you as a company, when you provide that little space of peace and calm like you said no, it's a fan clutch issue we know what to do, we're good. Peace and calm, like you said, no, it's a fan clutch issue we know what to do, we're good. I don't think that you should ever underestimate the value of that. Like every company talks about value, we always think of it through the lens of, like the quality of our products right, or the speed of our service, but like giving your customers a moment of peace of mind in a day or a world, you know, or a week that is filled with these challenges, I don't think that should be underestimated.
Thomas Kleich:Like I said, you focus on your products and your customers. Everything else falls in place, right. You take care of those two things and customers are happy, products working, everything else is good.
Jamie Irvine:Yeah, so you get to rub shoulders with all the big fleets in the US and Canada. I'm just kind of curious of what your impression is of how maybe things are changing towards attitudes towards training, towards, like, recruiting new people, trying to get people into the industry, making sure they have the tools to be successful. The tools to be successful Like. What are you seeing shifting or changing when it comes to attitudes towards that? I talked earlier in our conversation about a concerning attitude where people kind of feel like, oh, I don't have time for training. Like, are you noticing any changes across the board?
Thomas Kleich:Yeah, I am, and you know they're really to this day. They're focusing on training. They're seeking it out right. They want to put a program together. A lot of the really big fleets have professional trainers. They actually have a coordinator that does their training. They have in-house training. So we just provide our materials to them, they put it in their own system and then they train from there.
Thomas Kleich:But we have this other system. We can, like we said, we could, give them an email and a code. They can get in there, they can take, and I just send them what they're actually running for product. We have multiple videos for different products and I don't give them everything. I just kind of focus on this is what you're running, this is what you need to know. I'm not going to bury you with everything and I send that.
Thomas Kleich:But it's really nice because if they, if they use that system, I can actually track the progress. So when the tech goes in there, they can log in and it has the location that they're at. It's got the city and state, obviously their name, and when they take the test, they'll, they'll, they'll see that and I can track that, the date when they took it, whether they got the certificate or not, and everybody will get the certificate if they, if they just finish the course. They don't have to. You know, I said they get the question wrong it'll actually give them the right answer.
Thomas Kleich:So it's not like it's a hard test, it's just, you know, something that I want to make it easy and then I want to make it more accessible. So if they do take the test it's not one and done. They can go back to it, you know, and they say I want to see that again. Or they can use that literature with the quick, the QR codes, and look at that as well and say so, I need a refresher. I haven't worked on a fan drive for a couple of months. I want to try it again. Before I get into this, I'm just going to take 10 minutes. It'll make it so much easier.
Jamie Irvine:You know, being a leader in the heavy duty parts industry is not just about making the best product.
Jamie Irvine:It's also about following all of the best practices, and one of the things I see that Horton is doing with this initiative is you're making all of this content on demand. I often talk to my clients about how you need to make your video content as accessible and as binge worthy as it would be like on Netflix. You could bring up Netflix and you have all of these different videos you can choose from. For a company. They need to do that, and that's what you guys are doing. You're making it available. They can pick and choose what they need to watch. When they need to watch it, it's readily available. Like you said, you've even done the QR code so they can just, with their mobile device, open it right then and there. I just think that that is one of the additional ways that Horton continues to be one of the leaders in the industry and is, you know, really putting forth not just a quality product but following those best practices. Very much so.
Thomas Kleich:And I want everybody to see it. I've given it like I don't know. If you're familiar with diesel laptops, see, they approached me when I was at TMC. Hey, can we have your videos? Absolutely, I mean. I think the more we can get that information out, the more people know that, the more comfortable they are, the better they're trained and everything's going to fall in place.
Jamie Irvine:Yeah, diesel Laptops are actually a sponsor of the show and a longtime client of our consulting business, the Heavy-Duty Consulting Corporation. So thank you, tom, so much for taking some time to talk to us about this. You've been listening to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. My name is JB Irvin and I've been speaking to Tom Klike, director of Sales for Fleets at Horton To learn more and to see all of the great products that they have. To get access to this material, just head over to their website, hortonwwcom. Everything is there. Tom, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it.
Thomas Kleich:Thanks, jeremy, appreciate it.
Jamie Irvine:I hope you enjoyed my interview with Thomas Kleik from Horton and I hope that you take advantage of the training that they have created to help you help your customers. It's so important, and if you're an end user, you want to make sure that you have taken advantage of this training as well, so that your people understand how to get the most out of the Horton products. It's time for our next segment that's Not Heavy Duty. In this edition of that's Not Heavy Duty, I want to talk about the refusal to train people. The reality is, the trucking industry is the backbone of society. Without the trucking industry, the way that people live and people's actual lives do hang in the balance. So what we do in heavy duty really matters. Therefore, if you are dedicated to making this industry a better place, if your company works inside of the trucking industry perhaps at the manufacturing level, maybe you're at the distribution level of parts, or maybe you're in the parts and service side of the business. In any case, we all play our part in making the trucking industry strong, and so we should have a true dedication to helping heavy-duty people who work for us be in a position where they can thrive. Therefore, we would never refuse to train them, we would get creative and find ways to get the information our people need to do their jobs better. Now I want to share with you an article that was published a few years ago, all the way back in 2018. But I really think the situation has gotten worse since then, so everything I'm about to share with you is actually I think, the importance of it is amplified. So there was an article entitled Young Workers no Longer Get the On-the-Job Training they Need, so they're Finding it Elsewhere. This was originally published on entrepreneurcom, and we will share a link to this in our show notes, so you can read the entire article Now.
Jamie Irvine:According to Peter Capelli, the director of the Wharton School's Center for Human Resources, companies want workers they don't have to educate, and his research has found that employers don't train young workers like they used to. So let's review the numbers. In 1979, as per Capelli's research, the average young worker received 2.5 weeks of training per year, so that's equivalent to about 100 hours of training a year if you work a 40-hour workweek. By 1995, training time fell to just 11 hours. More recent data than that has been hard to find, according to Capelli, but the Wharton professor says that by 2011,. Only a fifth of employees reported receiving on-the-job training from their employers over the past five years.
Jamie Irvine:Now what's going on here is something that's often called the tragedy of the commons. Society as a whole is definitely better off if its workers are properly trained, especially workers who work in our industry, who, arguably, are the backbone of society. Now, that's not a quote from the article, that's my thoughts. So let's put this in context. Trained workers mean that they become more productive, so the more trained a worker is, the more they have the knowledge and the expertise and the skills to do the job that they're hired to do. The more trained a worker is, the more they have the knowledge and the expertise and the skills to do the job that they're hired to do, the more productive they become. This will mean that the companies that employ those more productive people become more productive themselves and they contribute a greater overall economic output. However, individual companies are better off if they leave the cost of that training to their competitors. So more companies these days, according to Capelli, seem to want a free ride. So, in other words, they're saying, yes, we want trained employees, but we don't want to carry the cost, so we'll let the competitors do that, and then we'll hire those people away from them, but of course, that doesn't work. If everybody adopts that kind of a strategy Now, the consequences for young professionals have really been tragic and it's been costly to everyone.
Jamie Irvine:Traditional jobs aren't providing them with new skills and therefore aren't setting them up for success in their careers. Obviously, if that's what's happening, then young workers are less loyal to their employers and we create this terrible feedback loop where employers say they can't get good employees, employees say they can't find good employers, and around and around. We go. So, unsurprisingly, young workers aren't happy with their employers, so they're leaving constantly we hear this all the time in heavy duty, disengaged from their jobs. Unlike any other generation before them, these young workers younger millennials and the oldest Gen Zs are seeking new skills and they're job hopping. In 2015, according to a Gallup study, millennials changed jobs three times more often than the older generations. The Gallup study estimated that turnover cost the US economy wait for it $30.5 billion with a B per year. It's a major problem, folks.
Jamie Irvine:Now, if you're on the employee side of the equation, there are some reasons for hope, and that's really because new technologies are enabling people to get access to better quality information at a faster rate all the time. And really, when you think about it, millennials have gotten the message their entire generation has this concept of being an entrepreneur. In the older generations, being an entrepreneur meant that you were without a job. Now, being an entrepreneur is the desired outcome for many, many young professionals, and they are really, really turning up the heat on traditional employers because they are increasingly choosing to go their own way and they are becoming their own bosses. They're training themselves and this is having a real negative impact on traditional employers. I think we've definitely seen this in heavy duty.
Jamie Irvine:A lot of young people over the last 10, 15 years or so have opted away from traditional jobs, like going into the trucking industry, and have decided instead to try to focus on different ways of making money. To try to focus on different ways of making money. And so I think of even my 11-year-old nephew, who has many men in his life, in his family, who are all in blue-collar trades, and yet what does he want to do? He wants to monetize a YouTube channel and be a content creator, not follow in the footsteps of his dad and some of his uncles. He's more following in my footsteps, I would say and it's understandable, right? If companies aren't going to invest in you, you're going to find your own pathway. If you have to finance your own pathway, you might as well be your own boss. It does make sense why people have gone in that direction. So what are we going to do about it? At the end of the day, if you want to be a heavy-duty person and you want to contribute to our great industry, which is the backbone of society, and you are an employer, you're have access to great training materials that you can provide to your employees, and you should take advantage of those. In addition to that, you need to increase the on-the-job training that you're doing at every level of your company. This is a way to differentiate yourself from the competitors in your marketplace who aren't taking those steps. This is something that it is an investment, but it's an investment that pays dividends in a huge way if you stick with it. That's how you be a heavy-duty person by giving back to the industry and stepping up and providing that training that our young people so desperately need.
Jamie Irvine:Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. I am your host, jamie Irvin, and, as always, I want to encourage you to continue to be heavy-duty. If you like the content that you're hearing, why not head over to heavydutypartsreportcom? Subscribe to our weekly email? You get one email a week so you never miss out on our content. If you like listening on your podcast player of choice, you now have the option in the show notes to text us. So we'd love to hear your feedback and make sure you follow us for free and, if it gives you the option, give us a five-star rating and review. It helps expand our reach. If you like watching the video version, go to our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button and that bell notification. Thank you again for listening to this episode of the Heavy-Duty Parts Report and don't forget to be heavy-duty.