Last week at the Heavy-Duty Aftermarket Week event in Las Vegas, I had the pleasure of dining with Michael Kinney, director of fleet sales for maintenance software provider Noregon Systems. Mike had just written a guest editorial for our December issue in which he talked about the rewards of sponsoring the technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) SuperTech2007 national technician competition, but over dinner he mentioned an odd fact that got me thinking…

As part of their sponsorhip, Noregon gave software packages to the winners of the 12 individual SuperTech skill stations–these were expensive, valuable prize packages, consisting of Noregon’s JPRO (R) Datalink Adaptor, JPRO (R) 6- and 9-pin Y-Cables, JPRO (R) Fleet Portal Software, and JPRO (R) Fleet Diagnostic Software. These packages were given out along with Panasonic Toughbook laptops, so those 12 lucky winners went home with a pretty complete diagnostic package that could revolutionize the way they do their jobs.

But here’s the odd fact that Mike Kinney mentioned last week: since the prizes were awarded last September, only two of those SuperTech technicians have registered their software packages with Noregon. That means that only two out of 12 are actually using their new diagnostic systems.

Are you surprised? I was.

There could be a lot of reasons why ten of those prizes aren’t being used. Maybe the Panasonic/Noregon package is incompatible with a system already in use at the winners’ shops. Maybe the winners are using the Toughbooks at home for personal use. Or maybe they just don’t know or care how useful this package could be

All we know for sure is that 10 of the best technicians in the business have some very sophisticated diagnostic tools that they’re not using. I wonder what their managers think about that? It is a puzzler…

I was just watching MSNBC’s coverage of the 2008 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, and heard some disturbing words from an auto industry analyst. The segment was looking at the health of the Big 3, and while the analysts were very optimistic about General Motors, and hopeful about Ford (most notably the new F-150), they were downright dreary about Chrysler.

Dodge is showing off the new Ram at the Detroit show, and while the truck looks every bit as good as the F-150, one of the industry analysts said that it offered “worst-in-class” interior fit-and-finish and materials quality (and it must be remembered that this truck was developed under Daimler’s guidance). These same analysts went on to predicted that Chrysler would be up for sale sometime in 2008, and that perhaps we might see a Ford-Chrysler corporation.

Now, anytime a talking head on the news starts predicting doom and gloom, I take it with a grain of salt. It’s hard to to believe that Cerberus Group would unload Chrysler so quickly, but then perhaps the market is shifting more quickly than anyone could have expected. If you have plans to add new Dodge Rams to your fleet, you might want to buy them sooner than later.

Last June, I had the opportunity to test drive all the new vehicles being offered for 2008 by General Motors Fleet and Commercial Division. Judging by the presence of at least a dozen Kodiaks and Topkicks at the fleet preview event, you never could have guessed that GM would announce, less than a year later, that it planned to sell off its medium-duty truck operations to competitor Navistar, the parent company of International Truck & Engine.

Apparently, GM is using logic similar to that used by Ford when it sold its medium-duty truck business to Freightliner LLC a few years back. Ford needed cash to acquire Volvo cars; GM wants to concentrate on its passenger car and light truck businesses. All well and good, but over the past few years Ford has been inching its way back into the relatively strong medium-duty truck market; I wonder if GM will someday regret this move and follow Ford back into the arena.

And what will this mean to truck buyers who deal with International? Will International’s CityStar, built in a joint venture with Ford, be sold alongside the newly-badged International Topkick? Will the new trucks run on Isuzu or International engines?

Apparently, this move makes good business sense to GM, but in the long run, it could hurt fleets, by taking away a few more product choices.

Fleet Maintenance Magazine has always supported the efforts of State Maintenance Councils, and that support will be growing even stronger in 2008.

It all started back in 2003, when the Tennessee State Maintenance Council invited me to their annual meeting, so that I could see first-hand what a difference a State Council could make to its members. I was so impressed by the number of people in attendance, and the variety of useful technical information presented to those attended, that I decided to write a story for the magazine about it.

Since then, we’ve made a special effort to promote State Councils and their activities whenever the opportunity presents itself. Our February issue will feature a guest editorial from an executive with the Indiana Motor Truck Association describing their efforts to launch a new Maintenance Council, and later in the year we’ll be doing some in-depth reporting on the new Indiana State Maintenance Council.

What has surprised me most about working with the State Councils is how popular the concept of the “technician championship” has become. When I first started working with the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) on the SuperTech technician skills competition a few years back, we counted five state championships around the country. Now hardly a month goes by that we don’t hear about a new state championship in the works. Even more gratifying is the fact that TMC is providing support and guidance to state groups trying to start their own competitions; ultimately, we could see 50 state championships and 50 state champs entered in TMC’s SuperTech event.

So with a new championship season upon us, it’s time to look at those states that don’t have technician competitions, and ask why. Many state trucking associations already have truck driving championships, and some are finding it relatively easy to piggyback a technician competition onto that. And once the first competition is off the ground, they find that it becomes self-sustaining, because everyone wants to come back again for another chance at first place!

What’s the case with your state? If there’s a competition, do you enter your top techs? If there isn’t a competition, would you like to have one? More to the point, are you willing to work on starting one? The benefits to the industry and to your shop are endless–so, what’s stopping you?