TMC to Host 10th Annual SuperTech, Discuss Maintenance Issues at Meeting
This story appears in the Sept. 15 print edition of Transport Topics.
The nation’s top truck technicians will put their skills to the test at the SuperTech 2014 competition during the Technology & Maintenance Council’s fall meeting Sept. 22-25 in Orlando, Florida.
The 10th anniversary of the SuperTech competition will feature 112 professional technicians who are competing for the top honor. For the first time, there is also a two-person team competition and postsecondary school student competition.
The first SuperTech contest, in 2005, featured only 15 competitors.
On Sept. 23, contestants who have aced written exams will compete in a series of 14 stations that test diagnostic skills ranging from engine hardware and electronics to drivetrain and brakes.
More than 1,230 technicians and executives have registered for the TMC meeting this fall — a near-record number that exceeds last year’s event, said Robert Braswell, the organization’s technical director.
Last year’s SuperTech champion was Mark McLean Jr., a FedEx Freight technician operating out of Montgomery, New York.
The keys to success in the competition are training and aptitude, Braswell said.
“Some people just don’t have the aptitude to do these kinds of things,” he said. “You could be a brain surgeon but unable to fix a truck.”
The contest is aimed in part at showcasing the skills of highly trained truck technicians who work in a profession that some still call “grease monkeys.” That stigma still exists even inside the industry, Braswell said.
“At our last meeting in Nashville, our keynote speaker, Phil Byrd [chairman of American Trucking Associations], asked those in the audience if they wanted their sons and daughters to be technicians or truck drivers,” Braswell said. “I don’t think three people’s hands went up in the room.”
Maintenance technicians these days are more likely to use a laptop or handheld device than a wrench, he said.
The fall meeting also will offer educational and training sessions and task force meetings to discuss maintenance issues, including chassis, brake systems and onboard vehicle electronics.
Several other issues also are on TMC’s meeting agenda, said Carl Kirk, ATA vice president of maintenance, information technology and logistics.
Among them is the upcoming federal proposed rule (Phase 2) on fuel efficiency and greenhouse-gas emissions, due in Spring 2015.
The final Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration joint rule, due out a year later, will have a significant effect on maintenance technicians, Kirk said.
A session on voltage electrical systems, he said, will open the debate on whether increasing electrical voltage on trucks can be an effective way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by eliminating such mechanical “parasitic losses” as the horsepower needed to run a water pump or a camshaft.
“There’s a serious question that needs to be asked,” Kirk said: “Is 12 volts enough? Europe already is using 24-volt systems and is looking at 42 volts. We’re still on 12 volts.”
The conference’s featured speaker at an industry luncheon Sept. 24 will be Göran Nyberg, president of North America sales and marketing for Volvo Trucks.
