Scott Swanson
Garrison Whitfield says he’s wanted to be a diesel mechanic since, well, at least as far back as elementary school.
After he graduated from Sweet Home High School last June he received a letter he’d written to himself as a sixth-grader at Hawthorne Elementary.
“I opened it right after graduation. I said I wanted to be a diesel mechanic.”
Whitfield is now one of 50 students in the Linn-Benton Community College diesel technology program which, last fall, located to a new center on Oak Street in Lebanon, led by program Director John Alvin, who once stood in their shoes.
Alvin grew up locally and graduated from East Linn Christian Academy in 1985, splitting his time his senior year between ELCA and LBCC, where he enrolled in the diesel technology program.
“About the time I got out of school, everybody was going into computers,” he said. “We were having little dips in the economy and the new thing was electronics, all the electronics coming into the country. Everybody was going into electronics.
“They were going to be doing computers, doing computer programing. There was kind of an exodus out of the trades – welding, machine tool, mechanics, all of it.”
The job market wasn’t great then, either.
“In ‘87, when I got out, there really wasn’t a lot of jobs out there. There were still lots of old-timers.”
As a result, when he finished the diesel program he spent an extra year going through LBCC’s automotive technology program.
He did “kind of everything under the sun” after he graduated, working as welder for Morse Bros., then about eight years at Dallas Equipment Rental, before returning to LBCC to teach, in the fall of 1999.
It’s a whole different landscape in the equipment technology field now, he said.
“The old-timers have actually retired out, and in 2008, anybody who had retirement who looked like they were going to go on retirement did. There’s been a mass exodus out of the market. Now we’re trying to replace all these people with new blood.
Alvin now heads the HEDT program, which this fall moved into the new facility at 2000 Oak St., joining the automotive repair program located in the former Pace American trailer manufacturing facility.
The 37,000-square-foot training center includes state-of-the-art equipment to train students in heavy equipment and diesel repair, and an Innovation Center, which offers space for industry to train employees and test equipment. Training will also be offered in alternative fuels for heavy transportation vehicles.
The diesel program’s move from the college’s Albany campus brings all transportation training programs onto one shared campus, opening up space for expansion of the other college industrial programs.
The Advanced Transportation Technology Center’s first building opened for classes in the fall of 2013, becoming the only major broad-spectrum training facility between Seattle and San Francisco for students to learn repair and maintenance of gasoline vehicles and those that run on alternative fuels such as compressed natural gas, propane, electric and biodiesel.
Construction of the Innovation and Heavy Equipment Diesel Center was made possible in part by $1.5 million from the State of Oregon, $1.5 million from Federal Economic Development Administration, and $2 million from a $34 million bond measure that voters passed in 2014.
The move has not only resulted in a more spacious location, but an increased student body, from 36 to 50 this fall.
“The last five years we haven’t really lacked for students,” Alvin said. “Last year, before we even went out for summer break, the program was full.”
“Every company – Coastline Equipment, Papé Machinery, AgWest Supply, all the people kind of in the nucleus around us, all of them are saying, ‘We need people.’”
The shortage of service technicians isn’t just local. The MikeRoweWorks Foundation, started by the star of TV’s “Dirty Jobs,” promotes vocational education with support for schools and students, as does the Association of Equipment Distributors.
Students are coming from as far away as California.
Francisco Garcia, 21, of Oxnard, south of Santa Barbara, Calif., is in his second year under sponsorship from Coastline Equipment.
“I didn’t know about this program until I got hired with Coastline,” he said. “They said, ‘OK, we’re sending you up to Oregon.’”
Previously, the company sent employees to a school in Arizona, but it is no longer offering a program, said Garcia, who lives in Albany with three roommates, also Coastline employees.
Garcia said he and another student were the first to come to LBCC.
“We love this place,” he said. “When I graduate, I will go back, of course, and a become full-time mechanic and eventually become a field tech. I want to have my own field truck. That’s my own personal goal.”
Oxnard used to be a center for strawberry production and other agricultural products, but urban sprawl has swept over the region in the last couple of decades, changing the demands for field techs.
“Construction is going on down there, so we rarely work on agricultural equipment,” Garcia said. “It’s loaders, dozers.
“Right now we’re getting the diesel part – engines, electric, hydraulics. The focus here is mostly on construction and forestry, but it’s still engines. It transfers over. We can do the same thing, just different machines. Here I worked on Freightliners and Kenworths, even though I will be working on John Deere. So far I like it here. I’m excited to graduate in June.”
Garcia’s story is pretty typical, Alvin said.
Companies pick students who they think will be good prospects, then pay half their tuition at LBCC for the two-year training program.
“It started out with sons of technicians who already worked for them,” Alvin said. “Now they’re actually going out and recruiting. They find somebody they can vet, then they panel interview the guy. They’re looking for the right attitude – work ethic, for one.”
Students then sign waivers giving companies the ability to monitor their educational progress and they have to maintain a B average, he said.
Though there’s no guarantee of a permanent job, generally that’s what happens, Alvin said.
“The student does a co-op during the first and second summers, and that speaks better than a job interview in a lot of cases. (Companies) know right off the bat whether the guys are going to work or not.”
He said there are currently two women in the program, one from Coastline in California. On a recent day, all the students, including Garcia, were wearing shirts bearing their sponsors’ logos.
Whitfield, who was born and raised in Sweet Home, and was a top athlete growing up, said he decided to join the LBCC program after working around trucks and growing up in a family in which trucks were part of everyday life – his father Randy is a Lebanon firefighter and a volunteer with the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District.
He said his purpose was strengthened by a summer working for Mike Zanona at Z&L Enterprises.
“I figured I really liked working around trucks, being around guys who drive them. I heard a lot of good things (about the LBCC program) and I figured, why not get into it while I could. It’s a good opportunity.”
He said he learned a lot in his initial quarter of the program, which “I really enjoyed.”
“That first term of electronics class – I never would have learned any of that stuff in a regular shop. Some of that stuff you can take and use on regular cars. It’s truly helpful.”
Alvin said a majority of the students come from a background in which they’ve already had exposure to heavy equipment.
“We get a lot of farm kids, a lot of loggers, people off the coast, people coming from trucking families,” he said. “One of our big things is basic skills, basic understanding of basic principles. ‘No, I probably couldn’t work on a baler today, but you could train me to work on a baler.’ The engines they know, the hydraulics they know, the electrical they know.”
The arrangement has worked well in nearly all cases, he said.
“We’ve only had one or two guys wash out of the program.
Donny Arndt grew up in a Sweet Home family that operates a local firm, D&S Logging.
“I’ve always enjoyed doing things with my hands,” said Arndt, a 2015 ELCA graduate. “We’re here to further our knowledge of diesel mechanics, so we can move on into the real world, into the shops, ultimately.
“I’ve been around the equipment world ever since I was pretty young. It seems like everyone’s always looking for a skilled mechanic.
“Right now, diesel mechanics are in super high need,” Arndt said. “Just about every single business that runs equipment is looking for mechanics, so I think it’s a good field to be in. Really, hardly anybody out there wants to do it because everybody is going into other trades.
Alvin said that one of the biggest challenges is finding prospects willing to do what it takes.
“We don’t pick beans. We don’t pick strawberries. Our society, we don’t teach the work ethic any more.”
A disproportionate number of students are from logging families, because “they grew up with the work ethic,” he added.
“We can teach them the technology. But what the employers are really saying is, ‘We need somebody with a work ethic and somebody who doesn’t know it all and who wants to learn.’
“That’s probably one of our biggest battles – stick-to-it-ive-ness.
“As my father used to say, ‘If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.’”