Heavy Vehicle Mechanic

Aimee Brown

Having good people skills is just as important as knowing how to fix a truck when you’re a heavy-vehicle mechanic.

Brendan Ryan, 20, has recently gained his trade qualifications as a heavy-vehicle mechanic and says he picked up on this aspect of the job early on in his apprenticeship.
“You’ll get a customer who will bring in a particular machine and say `it’s making a noise’ and you have to be able to extract enough information from them to work out what the problem is,” he says.

“It’s all about communicating.” Ryan, who has just started a job with North Richmond Automotive, says his communication skills are most often put to the test when attending truck breakdowns.
“If you have a truck that’s broken down and [it] needs to get back on the road quickly, you need to fix it and you may need to turn the customer round if he’s been waiting two hours and is irate,” he says.

Despite this, Ryan says attending breakdowns is his favourite part of the job because the problems can be challenging and he has a shorter time in which to fix it, compared to workshop work.
Ryan says his time is divided between responding to breakdowns, servicing and repairs. At North Richmond Automotive, he works on large plant machines and trucks, but says his skills are transferable to other mechanical fields.

Before moving to his current workplace, Ryan completed his apprenticeship with Crown Equipment Corporation. It is a large company, so he was given the opportunity to move in different areas of the organisation, giving him a broad experience base. “We did a bit of everything whether it is on large machines, heavy vehicles or other machinery. The things I have learned, you can adapt to anything,” he says.

Ryan believes this training complemented the subjects covered in his Certificate III in Automotive Mechanical Technology (Heavy Vehicle Road Transport) at TAFE’s Wetherill Park campus.
Throughout his three years at TAFE, Ryan was committed to getting the most out of his study, and his determination paid off. He topped the year in his second and third years and won a mechanical training course worth $1000 in his final year. He also came first in the state in TAFE’s Worldskills competition and third overall in the national competition.

Ryan eventually hopes to move into mining machinery mechanics, but says the trade skills would also be a good platform for anyone wanting to move into large truck-driving or vehicle parts sales.

HOW TO BE…

a heavy-vehicle mechanic
Do a Certificate III in Automotive Mechanical Technology (Heavy Vehicle Road Transport) at TAFE or an accredited institution while working as an apprentice mechanic. Contact the Automotive Training Board NSW on 02 9282 6428 or
atbnsw.com.au

By Aimee Brown, The Daily Telegraph.