With three decades of experience in the heavy-duty maintenance industry, Tommy Davis is no stranger to CSA.
The aftermarket veteran dealt with the program on a daily basis as vice president of service centers at AMBEST, Inc., and now shares his knowledge on the program and its impact on service as a professional trainer at GTD+, LLC (Great Training Delivered), a training and consulting company exclusively for the transportation Industry.
In his new role at GTD, Davis has produced a short paper on how his career has evolved, with tips and insight for service managers and their young technicians entering the heavy-duty industry on the performance regulations they now must face.
Below are his words; his advice to the successors of the aftermarket.
“Having just graduated from trade school, along with youthful exuberance, all I could think about was how many engines I was going to overhaul. Never could understand having to start in the lube bay and work my way up the ladder doing simple tasks that were far below my level of ability. I knew how to do anything and everything, don’t believe it just ask me. After proving I knew less than I thought I did I redoubled my educational efforts through my employer to hone my technical skills.
“Fast forward 10 years to 1988. I got to overhaul engines till I was sick of overhauling engines. I was able to build on my success becoming a service manager and 1988 found me with a main shop location and two satellite locations with around 15 technicians. My manager let me know of this new inspection for the Feds, no big deal as all our current preventive inspections exceeded the standard. What we have to do is ‘qualify’ all our technicians which is no problem, here is a form and they all have more than one year of experience. Signed everybody up with a qualification form that afternoon, filed them away, one more crazy thing off my list.
“The mid 90’s found me leaving fleet maintenance going into the third party service provider arena. 49 CFR Part 393 or Part 396 along with appendix G starting coming into my conversations with some customers but made no sense to me. Having been on the cutting edge of trucking technology it took more than 20 years for me to know there were certain safety regulation that had to be met, i.e. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.
