A team of truck technicians from Dallas is competing the world finals of an event highlighting their craft. The VISTA (Volvo International Service Training Award) World Championship is taking place this week in Sweden.
Bruckner's Truck and Equipment advanced through several rounds and is representing the United States in the finals after defeating 35 North American teams in the semi-finals. Two teams from Canada also advanced.
"What does it feel like to be number one?" says Service Manager Anthony Drake. "I don't know that any of us on the team can say we're number one without the rest of our team helping us get where we need to go."
"It's five or six months of qualifications," says Shop Foreman Deyan Draganov. "There are multiple questions we need to answer correctly. Say a customer comes to a shop with a complaint. What is the most probable cause of the problem? We need to dig into the technical information from Volvo and find the answer."
Drake says each member of the team has a specialty like brakes, drive-train, engine or electronics. He says they all work together to diagnose problems.
"First, you've got to identify what the problem is, then you've got to work through solutions to figure out how to fix the problem," says Service Manager Anthony Drake. "You go through troubleshooting, maybe electrical, maybe schematics to try to figure out what the problem is and what the solution is."
Drake says he and the team work together constantly, so they have learned where each member excels.
"You do rely on your experience," he says. "The questions will be black and white questions but then we have to go in there and learn how to diagnose it and go through the steps and go through them quickly. Dan is very good at that because he's a very good diagnostic tech."
"If the technician follows behind you and replaces a component but it doesn't fix the problem, you just spent all this time creating this big issue," says Bruckner Service Technician Jesus Gonzalez.
Draganov says a key to working together is the ability to solve problems more quickly.
"If he starts down the wrong path, everything else will do down the wrong path," he says.
Gonzalez, the service technician, says he would try to duplicate the problem a customer is reporting.
"Whether it's the check engine light, a transmission complaint, an EBS complaint, read the fault codes and, out of the hundred fault codes that are in there, try to figure out which one is causing the issue," he says.
He says they figure out if the combination of fault codes is more likely to indicate a mechanical, electrical or another issue "to try to figure out why this issue is happening." The team then works together to determine the most efficient repair.
"We have a good group of guys," Gonzalez says. "We share all the information. If we see a truck have a certain fault code, and I'm seeing it for the first time and ask around. I try to use in-house resources, 'Hey have you seen this before?' They can share some insight, 'I had that fault code three weeks ago, and this is potentially what could fix it.'"
"The job, mechanic, is turning and changing quickly to everybody's title should be 'technician,'" Drake says.
Team members say one complication will be working on a European truck which will have a different mechanical layout. Even then, they say a "truck's a truck."
"We'll keep it light, keep it calm. Not everything's a 911 event. We need to just make sure we concentrate on what we know, then we'll move to what we may not be as familiar with," Drake says. "We're going to do know what we know how to do then move on to the tougher parts of the competition."
More than 100 countries have teams competing at the VISTA World Championship.
