ya interesting point edwardt
i know in the past back years ago when i worked for what was called 'wrenn brothers' (now barlowworld, and soon to be liftone) they did train vendor tech's on occasion at a price of course, NOW i cant say how they are. AND of course you dont see this happening very often because of the cost of training, most customers are not willing to pay what it takes to attend a training class. IMO this is why its not so common. One customer i refer to that i know has the diagnoser software and has had some kind of training for cat is cocacola. I'm sure there have been others but i personally dont know for sure who they are. As for hyster/nacco? This current day i'm not sure either how they cater to independent's IF they even do now.

In the case of Crown? I believe they are more like raymond when it comes to thier trucks and training , they dont want anyone messing with anything of thiers period, i think is why they randomly change thier superword access on thier lifts routinely and train thier techs to not talk to any other tech from ANY other competitor.... if i'm not mistaken they have a 0 tolerance rule on this matter as well. What i see with crown and have heard from guys that have worked with them in the past they are heading downhill fast, I wouldnt want to work for them at all knowing what i know about them. They seem to follow a closely similar path as raymond.

bbforks,
sorry i came across a bit harsh in that response
i may have over-reacted slightly with an emotional response
doh!

i'm sure its not a perfect world EVERYWHERE in this world and ESPECIALLY in THIS industry :o)
I'm sure eventually training customers techs will be a thing of the past sooner or later due to cost of training unless you are a big corporation that has a large maintenance department like cocacola does. And as for hyster and how they handle this now?
I cant say....
It would only stand to reason that IF one had the money to pay for the training they would do it. But from what i'm hearing now they(nacco) require the technition to have certifications before they can even work on a truck of any type model and have the warranty supported. I'm sure this is ONLY comming from nacco and thier warranty standpoint as they wont pay for any warranty claims if a non-certified tech repairs a machine. But this is getting out of the realm of this discussion so i'll stop here on this :o)

I suppose we will just have to wait and see how things unfold in this new world we are jumping into.... i just get frustrated when i see things like this, knowing that in this day and age anything is possible if you have the money to pay for it, it seems. :o)