This is Part 1 of a three-part series. Click here to read Part 2. Part 3 will be published Friday.
The excitement in Kate Dell’s voice is infectious. The 27-year-old Washington State native is wrapping up her education at WyoTech’s campus in Laramie, Wyo. In just a few weeks, she’ll start a new job as an entry-level diesel technician at a Mack Trucks dealership in Denver.
Dell’s father is a farmer and logger who shrewdly sized his daughter up a couple of years ago. “I was in college studying to be a nurse, but my dad told me he didn’t think that was a good idea” she says. “He told me, ‘Honey, I wish you’d be a diesel mechanic because you’re so much better working on inanimate objects than working with people.’”
In the early part of the last century, the majority of Americans were raised on farms where self-reliance and mechanical ability went hand-in-hand. This ready-made technically astute labor pool served the nation well as industrialization, economic booms and global conflict impacted the growing nation.
Today, things have changed considerably. The majority of Americans live in cities, and their children, in many cases, cannot drive a car with a manual transmission – much less install a pair of brake pads. College is the default educational track for most of today’s urban kids, and although their computer skills leave many a baby boomer scratching their head in bewilderment, they are reviled at the thought of getting grease under their fingernails.
Dell’s upbringing has more in common with the Greatest Generation. Although she’d done her homework before starting her education and understood clearly that she was entering a field that offered her an unlimited career track and the potential to make a good living, she was surprised by the amount of onboard computers and electronics systems on today’s trucks.
