I'm an independent also and have been plugging along ok. The dealers seem nice to me and help me out when I ask for information. I have never tried to steal their customers and do spend money with them. The reason I have customers is because of the BIG problems they had with dealers. I have done the PM work on some new trucks still under warranty and they never said anything about that if they had to come in for a warranty issue. But, if it comes down to needing a lap top and software to fix something, then I will just call them and have them come in.

First & foremost- thank you to all the techs who are willing to share information. I never want to put anyone's job at risk, but I do appreciate the knowledge & experience you so willingly share. I do believe that the information lockdown comes from the manufacturer & the dealer is just following orders.

I read the entire post & noticed that in the case of the auto industry, the aftermarket association was behind getting the right to repair legislation thru. Am I correct on this? My point is that the auto manufacturers would have been quite content in never devulging any information. That would have been the death of independent repair shops. Independent auto repair shops now subcribe & pay for such services as Alldata & Snap-On Motis to name but a few. I'm quite sure that the auto makers don't just give this information away- but charge quite a hefty fee. This keeps competition healthy & benefits the consumer- a double bonus.

And a thank you to meliftman for acknowledging my experience with the dealer. I believe that my experience may be different than yours because I'm an independent & have no leverage of information (IMO).

In the case of Hyster, which I can speak about because I work for the dealer, the information is protected by Hyster and not the dealer. The dealer pays for the information, and much of it is confidential/proprietary and we are not allowed to copy nor distribute the material. I am open to helping any one any time and will share information. Will I give you information, yes, will I copy a manual or copy pages? Not if it says I can't without higher authority authorizing. I have had bbfprks experience from some competitors, but not usually. Most will share info but not distribute confidential material. Any employee of a dealer who distributres confidential material can loose his job and/or cause the dealership to loose their right to sell that brand. Again, help is one thing. Most manuals are available from the dealer for a charge, don't know if all manuals are available. Barloworld has had it's own training department, Hyster says a tech must be certified on a particular series of lifts in order to perform warranty work.

I am firmly of the opinion that this "corner the market on service" is not driven by the manufacturer, nor by the government's regulations, but by the dealer principals and management, and has been adopted by dealers following the lead of really big dealerships, with a concern to follow "industry standards". (although some of those "really big dealerships" seem to be packing up their toys and leaving the playground,,, amazing ain't it)
As far as if the training is "expensive", it seems to me that it may actually be a rather small investment in a good tech, when you consider how much a dealer can make from a tech who is billing 95% of their time, without warranty. The cost of the class is small compared to the cost of the tech not billing that few days time to a paying customer, while the tech is 'in class'.

I do agree that training is very expensive, but the fact is that the manufactueres have created this monster. Making a product that is so difficult to work on because they want to corner the market on service is of their choice. I know they are trying to comply with government regulations, but I wonder how much simpler their machines would be if they were forced to share the technolical information.

flight systems does school training?
i thought all they did was repair control boards and such

yes a week long training class is very expensive, especially if they put you up in a hotel too and pay for all your meals etc.

Back when i worked for Yale Carolinas they sent me and one other tech to a week long school in thier Greenville NC Plant on the SEM Control System when they first introduced them in the ERC series trucks. Was a good school :o)
I think the whole class had about 40 techs from all over, most from gregory poole.

Of course after that they (Yale Caro) started bringing in an engineer from Yale and doing those cheap 2 day training classes at the shop.
Cramming in all that stuff in 2 days was a pain i tell ya... doh!

From what i'm hearing now nacco is requiring thier dealerships to have thier tech's certified on any truck before they can work on it, or at least thats what i'm being told. I have a feeling this is more for warranty purposes than anything but i could be wrong. I suppose there might be a certain liability to working on those emissions systems, i've just never had to go to that length before to be qualified to work on them.

I had been doing this for a few years, but it was not considered unusual for a dealer to spend a thousand or 2 (in 1980 dollars) to send a tech to a week or so of 'school', and I know that the schools that flight systems or TVH provide are in no manner inexpensive, but do provide a tech with valuable understanding of the systems they cover. Most manufacturers "national accounts level" fleet purchasers could wrangle a place or 10 (maybe even free) in the factory level training on the units the corporation is purchasing, depending on how many units are being bought, and what price they are being bought for.

well after having a day to think about this and think about what i posted earlier i thought i might want to clarify a couple of things

first off these customers i speak of that got training were from big corporations that had purchased fleets of trucks from cat, i'm sure they had something worked out with cat to allow them to get the training etc. so..... this i guess would be the exception to the rule?
I am almost 99% sure you can get a service manual from the mfg through your dealer parts dept if your willing to pay for it.

secondly.... as far as the private independent tech?
no i wouldnt expect they would get different treatment than what bbforks got.
bbforks, that guy could of at least offered to sell you a manual :o)
i work with other competition like yale and hyster at times when i need help i cant get from our guys, of course i know most of these guys in thier training depts and their techs, being in the business for 30 + yrs does have its advantages i suppose ;o)

generally dealerships rely on this priviliged information from the mfg to do thier job and make their money. IF every tom george and harry had this the dealerships would be hurt bigtime, because the independent guy can undercut labor rates and alot of other things that are considered overhead for a big dealer. I'm fairly sure what hurts the independent guy is that he cant offer manufacturer support like the dealership can.

Besides you cant totally blame the dealer for the security encompased around the information and programs used on these lifts, yes they want to keep it 'inhouse' to keep thier business going, and its the government that dictates to the mfg's to design the lifts to certain EPA standards now because of emmissions standards and you have to be a certified mechanic to work on them.... according to the rules setup by the people that were the architects of this envrionmental
program.
And of course the DMCA and any of those other 4 letter acronyms the government came up with to help protect the intellectual rights of the ones writing these programs and information.
Can you see where i'm going with this?
I'm sure we could start a whole new conversation in another thread on that alone :o)

EasyM, is that a trick question?
hehe ;o)
just kiddin
i'd say no to that

If you owned a dealership, would you want to train independent technicians and provide them with the software just to compete with them down the road?

I think that is an issue that all forklift tech's need to take very seriously. I learned this business from my father who worked at a hyster dealer back in the 50's, went on his own in the 60's, & went on to make a very nice life for his family for the next 30 years. He always said that forklifts were about 10-15 years behind cars. I've found that to be true. With that said- look at cars today. Can you imagine what we're in for if we have no information?

I've been fortunate enough to have been helped by this forum already ( joined about a week ago) by someone who had information the dealer wouldn't sell me. I realized then that something has to be done or we're all in trouble. When a dealer looks you in the eye, with a smile on his face & tells you there's information available but "not for you", it's a HUGE red flag. (The kicker is that the custmer is not even in the dealers territory- which they knew).

I've never worked at a dealership, so I know tech's that work there have issues I don't know\understand & the same is true that I, as an independent have issues dealer techs don't know/understand, but what I do know is that if nothing is done, we all will work for dealers if we want to stay in this field.

I am in for that fortis class too.

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)

I'm sorry I sounded like I was whining- I'm just speaking from experience. As an independent company- the dealers in my area aren't in the business of training their competition. I've never been able to get any type of assistance of a technical nature from the dealers in my area. When I ask, they tell me they'd be happy to go fix it for me. I'm not in a position to have a relationship with a dealer of every brand of forklift outside of my area, so information is something I've never been able to get. Sure- the dealers have training sessions & workshops for owners of fleets, but not for independent companies- at least this has been my experience.

I was at a customer who has a fleet of crowns recently ( Their service dept. services those), I service a few I/C trucks they have. When I asked their lead tech about the software needed to service the electronics, he told me that they had to call the dealer for those issues, that they couldn't get the required information. I don't know if he was blowing smoke or not, all's I know is what he told me. Why would a company have their own service dept & not get them the tools they need to service their equipment?

John, [real questions] is it going to be that way (with software and cable availability) once LiftOne is selling NACCO product? Can I sign up for a Fortis Class?
I am not sure it works the same for every manufacturer, or every dealer's training department.

i'm sorry but since when is it impossible for ANY mechanic be it independent or working for another mfg or even a customer with a fleet of trucks to schedule and attend the training classes for the lifttruck they wish to learn about and obtain the required hardware and software to work on said trucks?
Last time i checked you can do this.
Yes it costs you money to take the training and obtain the software but far as i know its not impossible to get.
We have trained our customers techs and they have the necessary things to work on thier trucks, we do this for anyone that needs it if thier willing to pay for the training and etc.
i hate to play the devils advocate here but this whole thread wreaks of whining and moaning because someone isnt willing to do what it takes to get thier job done.