MAINTENANCE DIRECTOR/ASSOCIATION
Southeastern Freight Lines and the Technology & Maintenance Council
Lee Long, director of maintenance, SEFL, and chairman of TMC’s Professional Technician Development Committee
TPS: What do you think was the most significant breakthrough in technician tools?
Long: I think the thing that has most revolutionized the industry is the computers that we have on the shop floors. When I was growing up, we used to have volumes and volumes of books that we had to sort through and the information was dated. Now you can use the computer to do a word search or use it for diagnostics to find out what the problems are. A lot of the computer programs now even have diagnostic trees within the diagnostic program itself. It makes pretty quick work out of something that used to take quite a while to research.
TPS: What do you see the future holding for technician tools and technologies?
Long: I think with the dependability of the equipment that we are seeing out there now and the miles that we’re generating, the equipment is becoming more and more efficient as far as fuel economy and emissions controls. As you see that continue to be tweaked and put out there as a more reliable product – with new technologies you always have hiccups in the road – the use of the onboard diagnostic systems that are being proposed will actually assist the technician even more in diagnosing and repairing the vehicle.
TPS: How has the shop environment changed over the past 25 years?
Long: Technology has really opened up the shop to a whole new level. A few years ago a technician would walk up to a truck and he probably would be able to tell you what’s wrong with it just be listening to it and touching and feeling it. Now it’s gotten a lot more sophisticated. When you had those older manual engines, you had to break out some books and do some studying, and get your gauges out and do some testing. But now, all that is contained in a lot of the diagnostic programs. You hook up the connector J1939 data bus and it will tell you this sensor is showing a low voltage or high voltage or hasn’t opened at all.
So you’re able to click a button on a lot of the programs and it will say, ‘ok, this is where you start the troubleshooting tree.’ Before you had to go through the manual and get your test equipment hooked up. Now it’s all right there for you and it’s giving you instant reads.
TPS: As the industry tries to attract new technicians,
how would advanced tools and technologies appeal to the next generation?
Long: I was in New York City earlier this week and I was riding the bus and the subway, and I was noticing the kids, every one of them, had an iPod or an iPhone that they had in their hands. That is going to be instrumental to tap for kids of the future to come into this workplace. They know that there’s diagnostic equipment out there to not only work in their favor, but also to continue their education on that resource they already have in their hands.
The key thing is that as an industry we need to make it very well known to them in the elementary schools and the secondary schools that there is a career in this industry for them. What we find in our research is that most schools have a computer lab and let a kid sit down and do a computer skill test. It’s easier because you can put a lot more kids in a confined area rather than working on a car or a truck in a shop environment. We need to get away from that mindset and get our kids focused on not only computers, but also the things that are hauling products up and down the highways and into our living rooms and into our kitchens everyday.
