The ongoing battle to maintain trucks

Altrichter (seen at right) also encouraged the gathered technicians themselves to go out into their communities to help encourage younger generations to check out this career; one vital to supporting the health of the U.S. as a whole.

“Each person here impacts not only our industry but our communities and need to ensure that our voice is heard about the importance of the vocational trades,” he stressed. “We need to remind the American public about how their way of life relies upon professional trades like ours.”

Even NASCAR racer Tony Stewart mentioned the importance of trucking and truck maintenance in comments he made during a press conference at the event – an event he attended as part of sponsorship deal forged between his Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team and RTC’s parent company, Rush Enterprises, back in February this year.

Stewart’s use of the word “passionate” to describe how many in the trucking industry feel about the work they do – from those driving the trucks on across to those fixing them – is spot on, I think.

Yet the challenge for this industry is to winds to create such passion in the younger generations now entering the U.S. workforce – and I think will be partly through skills competitions like RTC’s as well as similar events aimed at truck drivers  than may just help fire up such passion for trucking careers in the months and years to come. That’s the hope at least.