Teaching the Trade
Hi Friends!
Last week, I was visiting with a client who owns and operates a service and restoration facility. We were catching up on some of the various objectives that we were working on for him, when in walked in a former client (retired), who’s done a few different things over the course of his career; including dealership and auction activities, etc. Pleasantries were exchanged and immediately the subject moved to something that is more often than not becoming a topic of conversation and is clearly a major source of concern for a lot of people in and around this industry:
“What’s going to happen to my classic vehicle collection/business when the current generation of service and maintenance professionals retire?”
Of course, there are a handful of notable organizations out there that are trying to tackle this problem head on. The RPM Foundation (which is part of America’s Automotive Trust) and the Piston Foundation are directly out there hitting the pavement and raising funds to provide scholarships opportunities for students. Colleges like McPherson are turning out a few hundred highly specialized graduates per year. There’s even a number of vocational institutions like EVIT (located here in Arizona) that have classic vehicle restoration programs as well, but these numbers still remain solidly below replacement numbers and it’s clear that this is worrying a lot of people.
My client had a couple of interesting takes on this, but the main, most important one was that he has sort of prepared for this within his own organization. He has a couple of younger team members (guys in their ’30s and ’40s) that are actively in the process of getting themselves into a position to pick up the ball and move it forward, once it’s their time on the field, and he’s helping to provide them with what it is they need to start pointing themselves in that direction right now.
This got my wheels moving a little bit, so when I got back to the office I got on the phone and started calling other clients and asking them at what point they knew they wanted to be in this business and what exactly caused that to occur. Almost overwhelmingly, it broke down to a father/son, father/daughter, etc type of projects. The reason I’m here is because of the hands-on family type experiences and as I talk to more and more younger people that are starting out in this business, I’m finding out that is becoming exceedingly less common. I think people tend to sometimes overlook the bottom end of this marketplace and prior to worrying about the next wave of folks that are going to keep these wonderful machines viable, on the road and continuing to inspire once they hit their late teens or early twenties, we need to focus much earlier.
On my Instagram page (reels tab) last week, I quickly profiled a 1957 Ducati 175 Sport that’s currently available for sale on Craigslist in Seattle, Washington. This is a cool, beautiful, historically important and interesting vehicle that offers easy mechanical access, a well-traveled path to restoration and solid parts availability, that can be had for less than the price of a 15 or so year old Toyota Camry. Is this a particularly practical or usable type of vehicle? Of course not. That’s not the point here though. The point is getting started, getting involved and moving somebody in a direction that can change their life (and maybe yours someday) and there’s many other options out there for something like this.
The best way to fix the future is to start working on things today.
That’s it for this week…
Darin Roberge