My friend Murray Voth from RPM Training said something to me last week that really stuck. His “preaching words,” as he calls them, are this: “If you have three bays or more, you must have one apprentice.”
Honestly… that hit hard.
This is the first time I’ve heard of a simple, measurable standard around apprenticeship in our industry, and Murray went ahead and did it. I love it. It turns a vague idea—yeah, we should probably hire apprentices someday—into an expectation. A benchmark. Something you can look at and say, “Am I doing my part to grow the next generation?”
If you’ve been on the fence about bringing in apprentices, all you need to do is look at Ford Motor Company’s recent public statement:
“Ford needs 5,000 techs to fill six-figure jobs.”
Kudos to many top shop operators like Dynamic Automotive for having an apprentice program in Maryland for years. And to many in the industry, like NAPA, for having an apprentice program with over 1,000+ involved. But it is not knowing you can do this; it is actually doing it. There is a gap between knowing and doing that we need to close.
Ford says: Five. Thousand. Techs.
If that doesn’t wake people up to the opportunity sitting in front of us, I don’t know what will. That post didn’t just catch the attention of current technicians. It caught the attention of parents, counselors, educators—people who influence the career paths of young adults. It forces a moment of reconsideration: Hey, maybe this is a real career with real upward mobility.
This Ford post may not necessarily be about apprentices; it may be about current working specialists moving to Ford. A recruitment style post. Wow, a six-figure job.
And that’s where we’ve struggled as an industry. We haven’t been loud enough, proud enough, or visible enough about the incredible careers available in professional automotive service. Part of that is the reputation hit we’ve taken over the years—Hollywood has never exactly shown us as the heroes of the story. They show the crooks, the con artists, the sloppy “shade-tree” stereotype. Never the true professionals who invest in continuing education, technology, ethics, and customer care.
So here’s my reminder—to myself and to all of us—that we’ve got work to do.
We need to be out there talking with counselors, superintendents, principals, parents, and students. We need to paint the true picture of what this industry offers: stability, income, growth, purpose, and a career path you can be proud of.
We need to run the most professional and profitable business we can, because filling our ranks with top talent depends on it.
The key words here are Professional and Career. Because that’s exactly what this industry is—and exactly how we need to be and present it.
