I started out working for ICI (Remember them?) in their engineering workshops on a YTS scheme, this was 1984, 6 weeks later i was offered a 4 year apprenticeship as a installation electrician, so took that instead, when i came out of my time, i'd had enough of moving wardrobes and lifting floor boards and plaster falling on your head, i went to my aunties in Virginia for a holiday and when i came back applied for a job at the local Cat dealer Finning as a forklift electrician, luckily my dad was a plant welder there and he was good friends with the fork truck boss at the time, and that is how i got my break into the fork truck business and i must admit it has looked after me well.
I left Finning (or Briggs as it is now) 16 years ago and went to work for another large company as engineer and now manager, i echo the sentiments about engineers and fitters, send a workshop man out on a field job and they forget everything they have learned in a workshop environment, I've seen decent workshop engineers go to pieces out on customers sites as they had nothing to fall back on, i always made a point of employing field experienced engineers on that basis. But i've also seen some so called engineers as they claim to be just fit part after part in a blind hope it'll sort itself out, there are very few proper problem solvers out there, i had a guy who worked for me who now is retired, and he had the lowest parts cost stock on his van, the highest first time fix rate and lowest number of breakdowns on his patch, he was an absolute dream and i dreaded the day he retired, i knew we would struggle to find anyone even half as good as him.
In a few weeks i'm off to a new company as a senior manager on MHE equipment, i can't believe the career it has given me and i'm still learning and picking up new ideas every month and cannot wait for this next chapter to start, it's always been a very interesting business to work in, with some great people in ti and at the same time a small world, trade shows are like school reunions, people you've not seen for a few years suddenely pop up at a new company and so on, i just feel like i've been lucky to enjoy the job and industry.