For many in the Australian trucking industry, getting behind the wheel is part of the DNA. Many grow up in and around trucks, tinkering with parts or learning to drive at an early age.
Jason Gavin wasn’t a quintessential young Aussie kid who spent his childhood in and around trucks. Instead, his family were bull riders based in Western Australia. It took an intriguing crossover of worlds for Jason to land with his feet firmly planted in the trucking game.
“I started working on trucks around 2004 when I was 13 or 14 years old,” Jason told OwnerDriver. “I was working on school holidays and weekends for a small company called the Flying Spanner.
“The only reason I got the gig was because my uncle was giving the owner of the company bull riding lessons, so he got me a job there.”
Jason may not have followed in his family’s footsteps to become a bull rider, but at 16 he was certain that he had landed in the right industry. He left school and started an apprenticeship in 2006, working in a small shop that saw him deal with vehicles as small as push bikes to the behemoths of big rigs.
“You worked on anything there – we touched whatever came through the door,” he says. “After my apprenticeship I landed a job at AV Trucks, which was a dealer of Western Star and MAN truck models.”
For nearly eight years, Jason became a vital part of the furniture at AV Trucks, putting his rich heavy vehicle knowledge to the test. The years spent in the shop saw him develop a love for MAN and Western Star products, while also starting to consider new career challenges.
When Penske took over as dealer in 2017, Jason went from considering a new career as a commercial electrician to recommitting to the heavy vehicle industry. Now, 17 years later, Jason is Penske’s newest on-highway 2024 Guild Master Technician winner.
“When Penske took over the retail of Western Star and MAN from AV Trucks in Perth in 2017, I loved it all from the first day,” he says.
“I’d never witnessed anything like it before in the industry. Everyone gets along well and the company cares – I remember Roger Penske visiting us in our first few months with Penske and greeting us all, asking us our names and what we did.
“I was blown away, I’d never seen a business do that before.”
Alongside the revamped environment, Jason also came into contact with a brand he’d come to love in the Detroit engine range. Over the next decade, he enhanced his capabilities and gained experience working on American-style trucks and their parts from Penske’s Perth branch. When he joined the Penske Guild and decided to compete in the Master Technician competition, he had no idea how far the decision would take him.
The Penske Guild has been running for the past 10 years, with it originally being designed to create a pathway for technicians to have their professional excellence tested and recognised. It now has roughly 90 members, with the Master Technician being run for these members. Pitting the best of Penske’s 450 technicians across Australia and New Zealand against each other, the idea behind the competition is for Penske to celebrate the skill and personal values of its technical staff.
“The on-highway Master Technician is assessed based on a person’s technical capabilities working on the Detroit and Western Star brands, and the off-highway Master Technician is for those working on mtu products,” Penske Australia & New Zealand chief operating officer Leigh Henderson told OwnerDriver.
“Following a preliminary round held online across our network of branches, we then objectively select the top six for each category and bring them to Sydney for a final competition that determines the winners.
“The final has a great atmosphere, with six 45-minute stations being set up with an individual judge per station to evaluate each person as they go through diagnostic and repair tasks.”
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When Jason found out he was one of six selected to contest the final of the Master Technician on-highway competition for 2024, he soon received plenty of advice. Others in the workshop told him he’d be “rattled” by the end of the day. While he stayed calm in the lead-up to the Sydney final, he soon felt the nerves when he arrived.
“The pressure of limited time made the final and the six tasks so intense,” he says.
“It’s highly unusual to conduct a diagnostic task under such time constraints – we only had 45 minutes to work through each scenario.
“It meant my mind was racing over every possible scenario, but I had to find a way to calm myself down so that I didn’t skip simple steps.”
While Jason expected the tasks to involve deciphering complex issues, one of the scenarios was as simple as diagnosing a blown fuse. Such is the nature of the final, it took Jason 40 minutes to retrace his steps and find that the issue wasn’t as intricate as first thought.
“I got another task right on the bell too, I was very lucky,” he said.
When he finished his turn at the six tasks, Jason quickly joined his other five fellow contestants to discuss the day. He soon found that he was in the hunt for the coveted ceremonial blue jacket that the Master Technicians receive.
“I thought it was between one other mechanic and myself, but I was confident I wouldn’t win it,” he says.
“When we went to the gala dinner and I was announced as the winner, I was gobsmacked. I was presented the blue jacket by Penske Australia & New Zealand managing director Hamish Christie-Johnston and I managed to calm myself to speak in front of everyone.”
As part of his victory, Jason won more than just the blue jacket and the crown as the Master Technician. He now gets to head to the Detroit and Western Star factories in the USA.
“I’ve always wanted to go to the US and I can’t wait – it’ll be an eye-opener to see the factories,” Jason says.
“I would also love to try head to North Carolina, where Team Penske is based, and try some authentic American BBQ.”
For Leigh and the executive team at Penske, the Master Technician competition is a prestigious milestone for Penske technicians to win. With past winners involved in the final and ceremonial dinner each year, Master Technicians have the title to their name eternally throughout their Penske careers.
“It’s something we value really highly and also believe it strongly benefits our customers – we want to make sure we have a strong connection to our brands by providing a trip back to the source factory,” he says.
In the off-highway sector, Frederich Pfuhl took home the award from across the ditch. He first worked on the mtu and Detroit brands in South Africa back in 2008, before eventually becoming a New Zealand based service technician for Penske.
“I used to have my own little truck business that was very small scale, but it didn’t work out for me,” Frederich told OwnerDriver.
“One of my mates worked for mtu at the time as a service technician and told me there was a job opening, so I joined the brand and never looked back.”
The switch to mtu allowed Frederich to revisit his apprenticeship, which was originally delayed after he completed his studies. After completing that through mtu’s apprenticeship program, he became a marine field service technician.
In the 16 years since, Frederich has worked on a broad spectrum of mtu products, ranging from the marine and mining sectors to power generation. After taking the opportunity to move to New Zealand in 2016 with mtu, he joined the safety team as a service technician at mtu’s Auckland branch.
“I was nominated for the Penske Guild competition by one of my managers,” he says.
“I always felt like it would be a good challenge for me, but also a good opportunity to participate and see how my skillset compared to others in the Penske network.
“It’s difficult to gauge where the Auckland branch sits in the whole program – were we up there with the other teams or not? I wanted to find out, and the competition highlighted that we’re part of a large group with a strong skillset.”
Part of the off-highway sector, Frederich works on any Penske product without wheels, such as motor yachts and ships. All of it is united within the small engine industry – something that has suited Frederich to a tee.
“From a young age, I got involved in working with small engine products like lawn motors and so on,” Frederich says.
“I developed a liking and skill for the mechanical world through that, so I worked part time in the school holidays at a lawn mower shop. Unfortunately, circumstances in South Africa weren’t great then, so I only got my chance to complete my apprenticeship when I joined mtu.”
Travelling across the Tasman to Sydney for the Master Technician final wasn’t an irregular occurrence for Frederich – his job often involves travelling each day to diagnose and repair products. But the nerves quickly arose when Frederich had limited time to prepare for the final after moving house just days before flying to Sydney.
Instead of stressing, he decided on the plane over to enjoy the event and take all pressure out of the situation.
“However, I called my father a day before the final and he said sixth wasn’t good enough and that I had to be number one,” Frederich says.
“He’s an ex-military officer and wanted the best and nothing less, so I was proud to win and tell my father that I won, despite not expecting to.
“I approached each of the six problems presented in the final like how I’d been trained to do so, and it paid off.”
For Frederich’s success, he now gets to head to Rolls-Royce Power Systems’ mtu factory in Germany. Despite his story of entering the transport industry being entirely different to Jason’s, he is similarly excited about what the spoils of victory now hold for him.
“I was lucky to win an apprentice award to go see the mtu factory back in 2010, so this is a full circle moment for me,” he says.
“It means so much to me that I get to win an award and go to Germany again, it’s amazing and I can’t wait to show my wife that area of Germany.”
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