Assembling 12 of Australia’s top heavy vehicle repair apprentices as nominated by leading technical colleges in each state, the challenge pits teams of two against a series of mystery faults across six heats before a grand final crowns the winning duo.
Brayden Conaghan from Penske Australia and Lachlan Tate from Brown and Hurley took this year’s win, working flawlessly as a team and remaining calm under pressure despite the complexity of the fault list.
Nearly 2000 high school students came to spectate across the two days of action, getting a taste of where a truck-related apprenticeship can take them with career-focused interviews, talks and on-stage advice from industry figures.
“I hope it opened the students’ eyes as to how bright their future can be in this industry, because they had exposure to a lot of people from the industry,” explained truck insurer and challenge sponsor NTI’s national development and technical manager, Paul Burke.
“Supporting apprentices is important and as an integral player we want to see the volume of young people entering the industry increase,” he said.
Penske Australia, another challenge sponsor, supplied three new Western Star X-Series trucks, which provided a level playing field as all apprentices were working on new trucks that were – at the time – unreleased.
The winners this year showed clear dominance heading into day two, after familiarising themselves with the new Western Star X-Series trucks, solving all nine faults in their pre-final heat and all ten faults – including the never-before-solved mystery fault – in the grand final.
“We caught up after the first day of heats and decided we needed a plan – we needed to play to our strengths and look at how we could approach the challenge,” said Mr Conaghan.
The perfect score from the winning team stunned judges and Penske technical staff, too, who designed the fault sets to be “very challenging” for the finals.
“Being a new truck, no-one competing had any experience with it but we made sure everyone got the best technical advice from our team,” said Penske Australia national service manager Shaun Bell.
“We were hoping to keep them going and didn’t expect to see every fault finished, but they really surprised us. We didn’t think anyone would finish the final fault board!”
Elation could be felt from the winners, who told us they were surprised but honoured to take the crown as the top up and coming truck technicians in the country.
“I’m pretty proud of us and how well we worked together, because there were time consuming faults but a lot of our strengths helped us in that final!” Mr Conaghan told GoAuto.
In terms of hiccups for the winners, Mr Tate mentioned equipment troubles in the first heat – a problem he and his teammate diagnosed, but the time penalty stung.
“We had a dodgy multimeter, which was frustrating but it happens. It took us a little while to figure that out – everything was just reading ‘open loop’,” he said.
The winners both receive a Wurth prize pack, an all-expenses paid trip to the Gold Coast 500 courtesy of sponsor NTI, and bragging rights at their prospective workshops.
In second place were Kyle Guy and Ryan Robinson, both from Followmont Transport, flying the fleet fitter flag.
Third place went to Nathan Kaker from Penske Australia and Caleb Todd from Cummins South Pacific, meaning another podium finish for sponsors Penske – highlighting the quality of its apprentice program.
“It’s always good when you have your homegrown people in the finals, because our guys had no real exposure to these new trucks – but we know we have the talent to work on them when they hit the streets,” Mr Bell said.
“The calibre of apprentices selected was so high and there are really no losers because the opportunities now are endless for them,” he said.
Former HVIA director and National Apprentice Challenge manager Chris Musch commended the teamwork from the apprentices, most of whom had never met before competing.
“The challengers were really good, especially the way they gelled with the communication and teamwork,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, though, because to get to this level and compete in the challenge … they’ve all done extremely well.”
By Cobey Bartels
Read More: Related articles
