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The company's third training tool is something Derby describes as, "Hey, come with me, I'm going to show you how to do it."
After all, that's how he learned when he started the job last year. Why shouldn't he train the new technicians the same way?
PLAN B
When he's fully staffed, Derby hopes to move more maintenance in-house.
"As we build this, and we get two shifts going, and the drive-through maintenance garage is going," he says, "we'll look hard at what makes the most sense: full maintenance lease, at a certain cost per mile, or… most larger fleets can maintain their trucks for three or four cents a mile internally. So you'll see us shift to that, but if we did it right now we'd be buried."
But he still needs to get those three technicians into the fold, and he doesn't know if the candidates from Monster.com will pan out. If they don't, what's Plan B?
Christel and Derby agree that referrals will always be a good source of new candidates, but they can't count on finding the right person at the right time by relying on referrals.
Derby will not consider recruiting skilled technicians away from his local Peterbilt dealer, for some very good reasons:
"I need guys here, but I also need good technicians still working at Peterbilt to fix our trucks at night," he explains. "And you try to be upstanding; you don't call people at their jobs trying to pull them out for money. Because then a person's leaving for the wrong reason.
