- Speaker #0
Hello and welcome to the Skilled AF podcast, where we give diverse voices connected to the skilled trades a platform to share their story. I'm your host, Amanda Lucchetti, founder of The Skilled Project, an organization on a mission to inspire 1 million people to explore skilled trades and construction careers by 2028. You can learn more about the org at theskilledproject.com. Today's guest is Keith Benson. the Automotive and Manufacturing Instructor and Engineering Department Chair at Petaluma High School in Sonoma County, California. A former Ferrari mechanic and NASCAR team member, Keith now leads one of the most advanced high school CTE programs in the United States, where students are building EVs, making parts for NASA, and landing high-paying jobs right out of high school. In this episode, we talk about Keith's full-circle journey to teach at his alma mater, the power of career and technical education, the impact of AI and automation, and what it takes to prepare young people for today's workforce. Wherever you're at in the world, we hope you enjoy. Okay, welcome to another episode of the Skilled AF podcast. This episode is another special one as we're spotlighting skilled trades and construction professionals in our backyard, Sonoma County, California. Thank you so much to Petaluma High School's Media and Broadcast Program, Trojan Broadcast, on letting us record here and helping produce this episode. And today's guest is a Petaluma High-owned Mr. Keith Benson. This one's been in the making for a while, but Mr. Keith Benson is the Automotive and Manufacturing Instructor and Engineering department chair. at Petaluma High, but to his students and broader community, he is so much more than that. He's a mentor, he's a professional educator, and is helping shape the next generation of makers and builders. Keith, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to formally talk to you about your experience getting into the skilled trades and what you're doing here at Petaluma High.
- Speaker #1
Well, thanks for having me here, Amanda. I'm looking forward to the conversations about this today.
- Speaker #0
Great. Well, you've come full circle, so you were once a student here at Petaluma High. Then you went into the industry, now you're teaching. Can you talk about that journey going from high school to industry and then coming back?
- Speaker #1
Sure. So I was fortunate to kind of know what I wanted to do more or less at a very young age. So long story short, I wanted to be in racing, motorsports. And from probably age 11 on, I was hyper-focused on that. So growing up, I was fortunate enough to do a little jet ski racing and get involved with a little amateur car racing. And throughout high school, I wanted to know everything I could possibly learn about automotive, metalworking, and anything involved in racing. It wasn't uncommon for me to always have a magazine in class because that was our version of the cell phone back then. And, you know, I probably knew every catalog price of the Summit 1999 catalog, and to my teachers could probably tell you. But full circle wise, so long story short. After graduating here at Petaluma High in 1999, I went to Universal Technical Institute on a full-ride scholarship that I earned while in high school by doing competitions through, it would be equivalent to SkillsUSA Now, and also some other competitions that were specific to automotive. So I was able to basically fund going to the trade school. It was a 22-month program in Phoenix, Arizona. And then from there, I got hooked up with my first race team in NASCAR. It was kind of a fourth tier down team. We traveled together on the weekends for about three years, and then I moved my way up to the NASCAR Truck Series and ultimately found out where I wanted to be or where I was trying to get to was the top of the line, which is the Cup Series. And then that puts me in about 24, 25 years old. I had my first child, Haley, and learned that racing is very difficult to be a parent in traveling. So I had to change career paths at that time. So I ended up looking around car dealerships, worked for Ford, Nissan dealer, and ultimately led me to kind of the same fit, Ferrari Maserati. Pretty much did that the majority of my career. I left the industry for a while, worked in the family business, and then went back to it because, you know, that's what my passion is. And then a few years ago when my daughter was coming to high school, we found out that they were thinking about getting... removing the automotive program here at Petalma High for difficulties of finding the right instructors and the right funding. And I stepped in with a community group. It wasn't just me. I always tell people, you know, I had a team behind me pushing me and supporting me. And I think if you look at it six years later, what we've created, it's pretty significant. I mean, we have from one vehicle to too many. We just built our own car. We're going to a competition, so I'm not going to elaborate too much. uh well this won't be for a few days so we built our own cyber truck or version of it We call it the cyber duck. So we built it in six weeks, believe it or not. It actually looks pretty good. We have our own pH-themed NASCAR. We have a Maserati. So we have some really top-of-the-line opportunities for our students to learn on and keep engaged. And we've seen the automotive side go from two classes when I started to potentially six classes next year for our new bell schedule. So students are really taking a note to what the trades can offer. So real proud of that.
- Speaker #0
Wow. Two to six. And then you, 2017, right? It was when you transitioned back.
- Speaker #1
So 2017 is when I got involved and I was still a Ferrari mechanic and I was involved as a booster level supporting the other teachers at the time. The community came in in 2017, helped begin, clean up the program, clean it up. And then I officially started in September of 2019.
- Speaker #0
So where did you feel called back to teach? Like Were you getting pulled to teach? Were you like, oh, this is for me? Where did that come from?
- Speaker #1
Well, like I said, I had a lot of people saying, you should do this. And, you know, I always thought, oh, no, I can't do this. You know, this is, I don't have a teaching background. I didn't go to university, you know, but I did have a lot of experience in business. My family, you know, owns Petaluma Businesses. I tell people I was born in a boardroom, you know, because that's all I heard at Christmas and birthdays is business talk. So. Essentially as a TCTE teacher, you're running kind of a pseudo business without potential profit. You're putting it back in your classroom. So I had those skills. I have taught different levels of racing. So, you know, I was a formula mechanic leaving Ferrari and coming back. So it was a formula driving school. So that was a form of teaching. And then also teaching new technicians in the field. You know, you constantly have turnover in automotive. It's kind of a high turnover field in the Bay Area. the money continues to increase. So I was always finding myself training a new technician, not 160 at a time, but felt they did pretty good at it. So I gave it a shot and I kind of fell in love with this career. It's a lot. I had no idea how hard teachers work. Looking back, I wish I would have known that sooner and been a little bit more attentive when I was a high school student. Most of all, I really enjoy the culture we have here in Petaluma and on our site. Like I feel Petaluma High School. deep down, like we have some stellar staff and very caring and professional. And I like to work with professional people that are trying to be the best. Some call them toppers. You know, they're always trying to be, think 20 steps ahead, how they want to do better next day. And I think we really have that culture here.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I didn't grow up here. I'm a transplant, but I feel very lucky to have landed in Petaluma. I know that my kids are going to get raised here and go to these schools. It is a very unique place. I want the world to know that this place success. Because it's a model for what both the trade side and the engineering side can be as these young people go into that next phase of their life. So like the programs, last year I got to come in and Shadow, one of your students, was making a NASA part. It is so amazing to see the types of machinery that they're working on. I've had somebody that was like with me and he was like, he had gone to Stanford Engineering and done mechanical engineering and was like, we didn't have this equipment. Like, oh my God. So... the programs here are spectacular. Your students are getting a world-class program. Talk about, you've done so much work to build these up. Can you just talk about the NASA partnership and you have automotive and you have advanced manufacturing, you have your engineering, like talk about how that is set up and what students expect to receive going through your program.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. I mean, you know, I've been here six years and done a lot, but I had a good stepping stone. The teachers had set up the programs before, you know, especially Metal Shop. Dan Sunia was a former teacher. He had the project with the downtown Petaluma. So a lot of people don't know, a lot of the park benches in town were made here at Petaluma High School. And at the time, CT didn't have the funding it has today at this moment, because I think society is waking up to that. And our government is finally funding it the way they should. So he had the kids produce all these benches, and that funded a lot of the machinery that... you see today. I have added in machinery with, you know, things I like to teach, sheet metal and 3D printing and stuff like that. We always feel we're 10, 20 years behind in education where industry is because manufacturing now, you know, we're going into the AI and robot world and big time. And I've been all these seminars since I've been in the last six years. And, you know, our students are going to be in that workforce where they're going to be working side by side with probably some sort of AI driven robot. you know that maybe they'll carry out these cameras and set up these microphones and all that but somebody needs to learn how to program that and how to utilize that so i'm trying my best to keep up with that with you know what my capabilities are and what technology we have available to us so that's probably the next big step for us over there in the engineering department is get more heavily involved in that realm and we're just starting to scratch the surface where you know for the first time we're using ai to help program parts on our CNC machine. You know, it's not perfect, but it's pretty good and it saves you a lot of time in prototyping and productivity. And so we definitely want to teach them because they're going to enter that workforce.
- Speaker #0
There's so much going on with AI. I think about that. Like, how are you bridging that gap between industry, education? What can you teach? Who can you bring in? What partnerships need to exist, right? Where does the funding come from? It's like, it needs to be like a public partnership.
- Speaker #1
We're fortunate that our community has a lot of talent here. And anybody who I can pull in has more talent than myself in a realm like AI, which I'm not going to claim to know much about. Yeah, I can make a few cartoons on my phone. Okay, that's as... you know, and program some things. But, you know, as far as coding goes, you know, that's probably the next step is somebody to come in and teach them the ins and outs of whatever that looks like. I have a lot of fears about the future workforce. About, I see two paths. This great path where labor that we don't want to do is taken care of by this. And then my fear is this stuff taking away jobs. And I think for years I've been telling students, be the person that can fix the robot, program the robot. Teach the robot, not the person that gets replaced by the robot, because it's coming. I mean, I went to a few seminars and I saw what these robots are capable of doing. And I don't think the public is aware of how far along it is. It's almost a little scary. It's exciting, but it's also a little scary. We show a video in my class, usually like a 10-minute warm-up. We're trying to stay on top of the progression of the robot. And just in the last year, we saw Tesla has the Optimus and Boston Dynamics has another version. And, and. how far it's advanced this in the last nine months is pretty amazing and so uh the keep up in education we have a big task ahead of us we need to get hyper fixated on and giving that access to that education these students because they are going to be up against this stuff yeah i don't think anything has probably moved as quickly in history i mean this is i
- Speaker #0
think again about the data center stuff that i mentioned previously to you off before we started the podcast, but I mean, we have to build data centers within their... try to put a trillion to build a bunch within the next five years because we're going to have an insane amount of energy demand from these data centers. Well, who's going to build that? So we haven't had this. It's been unprecedented. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens. And it's true because you're on AI, and that potentially is taking jobs away. Is it creating jobs? There is a lot of irony there.
- Speaker #1
Well, I think it's different than any time because we are semi-duplicating our capabilities as far as motions go, the finger coordination, the movements. It's got 22 movements right now. We've never had that. I mean, the horse and buggy going to the car, that was one thing. Going from typewriter to computers, that was another. This is a completely different step. This is basically, I don't want to say creating life, but something very close to what we can do. now What happens if labor is replaced by what becomes the currency? Well, I think interactions become the currency at that point. So our students, broadcast channel is perfect for this. They're interacting with people. I think that is going to be a big industry of currency, art, stuff like that. Because you're going to have a robot doing the dishes at a restaurant, probably changing hotel sheets, and then eventually building cars and sweeping the streets or who knows what. And I foresee it happening by the end of the decade, or at least going in the middle of the next one. I really feel that we're a decade away from having our own rosy robot in our house that does our chores, which sounds absolutely wonderful, doesn't it? I mean, we'd all love that, right? But again, what does it do to the workforce? Now, there's a lot of jobs that it probably won't replace. Doctors will use AI. But the hand-eye coordination, mechanics, super hand-eye coordination, okay? So those type of jobs are safe. Certain types of craftsmanship where you really have to have that human eye and human element, those jobs are safe. But anything with repetitive motion, sales, mayors, you know, like registers and stuff, those are probably going to be limited.
- Speaker #0
To the programs and what you're training your students and exposing your students to, So firstly, you're... them and or doing the best that you can prepare them with what's happening with AI. It is interesting because there are a lot of these skilled trades jobs or hands-on jobs. It could be something that down the road, maybe a robot comes in and takes a piece of it. But some of these other jobs, if you're like in software and or a web developer, like those, I could do a lot of that. So it's kind of crazy to see like the shift of where that's going. But I still think there's a lot of opportunity in. the world that you're in.
- Speaker #1
Absolutely. Well, just like anything, you have to know enough to know when things are wrong, right? We can Google stuff. We have to have enough sense to know when we're getting false information. We have a calculator. We still want to know enough math to know if the equation looks right, especially what we're doing with big dollars or whatever. So you still have to have all those base core skills. And I think that's what we're doing here. I mean, we're just touching AI. But as a high school student, especially coming in this era, We still need to know how to measure things. We still need to know how a machine sounds when things are going right and when things are going wrong. So those are quote-unquote soft skills, and you have to be exposed to that. And the only way to get exposed to that is to be immersed in it. The stuff I do, I can lecture somebody for 10 years straight, and it doesn't mean they're going to be able to go out and do it. They have to feel it, see it, create that high-end eye coordination. and This year has kind of hit me. I've observed the kids now for, students now for six years. And the hand-eye coordination in the 2D world is really good. Like they can smoke me in video games like no one's other. But in the 3D world, I don't think we're giving devices too soon. And we're not giving enough Legos and blocks and sticks and stones. Where we're not building those early hand-eye coordination skills. It takes a little bit while to build that up. So like if I say, go take a lug nut off that car, sometimes it's like. How does this socket fit on here? And I'm so used to working with high professionals in racing and Ferrari, I forget that they have no experience yet. And it's not faulting them, it's just they haven't had access to that as early on as maybe previous generations did. Fixing bicycles or skateboards or lawnmowers or whatever their family was. So I was fortunate to be exposed at a very young age to probably a fault, you know. because my family had the business in town and they had shops and, you know, I'd just be there watching the welders and the machinists and everybody fix things and just soaking it up because I was interested in that. Not everybody has that and I'm aware of that. So that's where we bring them in and allow them to have those experiences.
- Speaker #0
And I mean, you just talked from a skillset standpoint, you talked about some of these hand-eye coordination skills, right? Like you're teaching, like what other foundational skills are you teaching that you think are critical going into whether you go... trades manufacturing or engineering?
- Speaker #1
Well, we have a daily employability score and, you know, no matter what career you're in, your employer wants you to show up on time. They want you to be professional, dress professional. Not the first thing they want to see you do is go to the restroom, take a coffee break for the first half hour of your day. You know, here it's even worse because we only have 90 minutes to accomplish stuff. So that's what I expect. So I actually treat. Our shop, even though it's a class and it's a school, the way I treat it, the way they are supposed to treat it is like it's a job. And instead of income, you're getting a grade. And I think a lot of them leave after a few years of these programs. They do know what an employer expects on day one instead of learning the hard way by the employer saying, oh, you screwed up. You know, here's your last check. So we teach those. I don't know if you would call that a soft skill or not, but we're teaching those. those critical skills that the workplace environment wants. And the students can leave my class and enter.
- Speaker #0
a high level of the workplace right out of high school. I have multiple students that are already making SpaceX parts right here in town, and they graduated last year. And they're already the high level inspector because of their experiences they had here over a course of three or four years of high school. I have a student that is in the industry that would love to come back in kind of the same route, teach here eventually. And she's already focused on that. She's like, what do I need to do? I'm like, well, first you need to get some time in the industry. It would be helpful if you go get some teaching credentials first before you show up. And I'd be more than happy to hand the keys over to that person in a couple more years.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, and that's what I was wondering is from the skill stuff that you're building, but just what is a typical pathway for your students that you see? I'm sure it's all over the map. They come here, they go into your programs, they get your skill sets. where do they go next?
- Speaker #0
So if a student doesn't want to go to a post-secondary school, either trade school, college, right out of high school, I can get them an internship with many shops in just in our Sonoma County area. A lot of the shops in town that are independent shops are former students of Petaluma High's automotive program. So they also have an affinity to hire the students, give them a chance. If a student goes to a trade school, like say a universal tech, wild tech, local JC. community college, they'll come in at an even higher level than I can give them here. You know, those are dedicated trade schools with huge resources. The advantage to that is, you know, trade school and automotive, usually you're out of school within a year. And a lot of people don't know in California, you cannot pay an automotive technician less than state minimum wage times two, which is $33 an hour. Now it does come off stipulation. You have to provide your own tools. So some Places are providing an entry-level toolbox to vet the individual that's a 19, 20-year-old person getting into the industry with no background. So they might have to work what we call the lube technician for maybe a year or two and then move up to tech one, tech two, and tech three. And that's a whole other conversation is how we represent the pay scale in the Bay Area. I know we had a viral thing, one of my quotes of 250K a year. And it's true. I could name countless people that are in that pay range. But when you look at the statistics, the Department of Labor, you got to remember the 30% of industry is the lower end skill sets, the tire changing, the oil changing, the basic stuff. Now, you know, you get a diagnostic tech and they have to know just as much as a doctor and approach the process the same way. So they're the ones that are making that top 20%. They're the ones in that. you know, 150 to 250 range, you know, and you have to hustle too. A lot of people don't realize mechanics typically at a dealership level are on commission. So you can either give yourself a pay rise by being super efficient, you know, working hard, covering all bases and doing your paperwork right and leave, you know, as $150 an hour employee. Or if you sit around drinking coffee all day, you can make $20 an hour. So, you know, it's as good as you want to make it in that, in the way our industry works. manufacturing is completely different. It's usually a set salary or hourly, and it also has many different levels. So like a programmer, someone that can program the machines, service the machines, and basically act as a shop foreman, they're 150 plus dollars a year as well. And I can tell you one thing, every week my email is full of people looking for students to hire right out of high school.
- Speaker #1
I think it was Wall Street Journal just put out. I don't know if you saw it, that they are poaching people from high school. So, yeah, I mean, there's a huge opportunity. I think on the front cover of this article, it was like a student's getting almost $70,000 straight out of high school. I mean, not even completed high school yet, I don't think.
- Speaker #0
Well, then they also get to train them their way, right? So if I'm a company and I have a very specific product, I have a student. Actually, I should tell this story. I have a student who just got hired on a company at Snowman. All they do is make nuclear submarine parts. He is still a high school student. He's over in the shop making nuclear submarine parts. And there's some stirring about the whole Mare Island going big and everything else because nuclear submarines are the newest, latest thing they want instead of ships because they're underwater. Anyway, long story short, that's all this company does. And so you have to have a security clearance and all this paperwork. He said the paperwork took two weeks before he got to step in the door, which is true. But he's in high school doing this, and that is a very high-paying job. Another former student that graduated during the COVID era is also working. And the owner of this company, this is a very large company, we toured it about a month ago. He says, this former student, it's been her four years, he's going to end up running my company probably in another four. So that was a big wake-up call, like, wow, this is working.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, people are going through your programs or are landing high-paying jobs and jobs that they can grow in. There's just so many pathways that they can take. I love that story.
- Speaker #0
I think we're kind of, the pendulum is going back to how things used to be, you know? I don't know when it changed, you know, ROP, where, you know, you do get placed in an internship in high school. And it's always about liability, right? with all jobs like well we can't hire them because they're not 18 and they're going to be around heavy equipment with the work-based program my understanding is there is a little wiggle room there where you can get a 16 year old person in an environment like this you know they might not be able to drive a customer's car because the company's insurance but you can at least get them in the environment changing oil maybe moving tires sweeping floors which i always recommend the students go test the industry before you dive head in you know if you can have a year or two in high school where you're a around the field, because you might not really like it. These careers aren't for everybody. They're tough, you know, they're not an easy career. You work hard, you know, but the pay scale has finally caught up to that.
- Speaker #1
Well, to people listening, what Keith was talking about regarding my viral post, I think the first time I was on the skilled project was quoting Keith about how much auto mechanics makes. So it was fantastic and it just blew up. And it really pointed at this whole thing is like, why do we even question that these people can make that much? Right. That's the whole point. But in regard to, you're talking about, this might not be for everyone, but what types of students do really well in these careers or in your classes?
- Speaker #0
Well, I mean, I hate to typecast anybody, but I mean, all different types, really. I mean, we have students right now that have graduated our program, I don't know, a year or two years ago. They're at Cal Poly. becoming mechanical engineers supposedly cal poly called our principal and says what are you guys doing over at pedal my god right these these kids that we got out of these programs are at such a high level we're not used to this what are you guys doing that's what that comes from our principal and it's just because we are fortunate as a community like i said most high schools don't have a full machine shop you know we're the only high school that i can find that is doing NIMS testing west of the Mississippi. We're one of only a few high schools in California that are involved with the NASA program. And all these little things, they learn a lot. Sometimes we don't even realize how much they are learning from this stuff. But they're able to adapt it later and say, OK, I remember that discussion in Metal Shop when they're in the college program, where they can relate. It's not foreign to them. And mainly what we're doing here is creating confidence. I like to see a student that gains a lot of confidence. You know, our FFA program, the kids learn how to speak in public, and they're very confident in their delivery. You know, confidence is the number one thing I think we can provide. And I've seen kids come from very scared of all the equipment. It's very intimidating when you first walk in my shop, like, oh, how am I going to learn this? Well, six months later, they're lighting torches, cutting sheet metal on a manual lathe, manual mill, running a CNC, 3D printing.
- Speaker #1
You have a dyno.
- Speaker #0
A dyno. We haven't got to use it much lately. I'm so busy. But yeah, all this stuff. I mean, it's the confidence. And if you're confident in something, you can tackle anything. As you become an adult, you realize there's a lot to tackle, right? I've always been confident to figure it out. It's a fault because I try to do everything myself and I have no time to do anything anymore. But I have the confidence that I can figure it out. And I think that same applies to our students.
- Speaker #1
That's even in the work that I'm doing when I'm talking to people and understanding where these gaps are. That confidence is a big thing that comes up. Imagine if you have these experiences earlier in your education journey, the opportunity for that confidence to compound over time, it changes the trajectory of your entire life.
- Speaker #0
Well, I think the confidence comes before the competency, right? You have to be confident that you're going to get to that place where you can be competent enough to maybe even come back and teach it like I did. That's what it takes. I can tell you countless stories of students that, you know, they started off not confident. Now they're doing these wonderful things.
- Speaker #1
So students that do well, I mean, obviously have an open mind, right? Work hard. Yeah, are able to apply what they're doing to the work in your classes and to take that on with them. A lot of good stuff there.
- Speaker #0
Let's talk about that for hours.
- Speaker #1
Quite a bit. I wanted to talk about industry evolving and EVs and all that stuff and hydrogen. I know we've talked about hydrogen. Let's table or put AI in the corner for a second. What are you most excited about regarding where some of these industries are headed and how it impacts the work that you're doing?
- Speaker #0
I really want that rosy robot doing my laundry. But no, the automotive right now is in kind of a gray area. Transportation is in a gray area. I confidently can say I feel hydrogen, when the infrastructure catches up, is going to be the way. Because there's one flaw we have with electrical vehicles. There's many great things about them. There's two major flaws. Number one, if we continue taking mining resources out of the ground, are we going to be able to cover the three billion plus vehicles we have on the planet? and replace those with that. I don't think so. At what cost to the environment. Now, another problem with the batteries is cold country. A lot of the world is cold, and batteries don't like cold weather.
- Speaker #1
They talk to people, I mean, how are you going to drive a bus and it's freezing? Like, yeah.
- Speaker #0
You know, Tesla and the Cybertruck made a flaw about them putting their headlights and every time it snows, you can't see where you're going, supposedly. I think hydrogen is the answer. We have more hydrogen than any other thing, and it goes back to the product, water. You're going to just make water. water now someone told me there's some other pneumonia made i have to research that the problem is infrastructure right now the california is the only state that has hydrogen stations a total of 82 okay now you can drive supposedly from la to san francisco and hit enough stations to make it here that's it you're not going to go across the country you're not going to make it to seattle etc hydrogen also has to be stored at very high pressures which is a little scary. 10,000 PSI is quite a bomb you're sitting behind you. So that's something to sort out too. But also what's exciting about cars right now is the autonomous driving. And I think we're going to see in the next five years where if you own a car that has fully autonomous driving, essentially you could go to work in your vehicle and you could send your vehicle out to act as an Uber. Now this is all going to take legislation and all this other stuff. and it could make you income like an airbnb for the eight hours or ten hours you're at work okay that'll change a lot we have a lot of local community discussions about parking right now let's say that takes hold where there's a fleet of uber teslas or whatever the car waymo's or whatever rotating around the city and you can push a button have a car there in five, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, whatever. You might not need a car at that point. Because we all know it's getting very expensive insurance, gas, and the car ownership. So some of us, we might decide to drop our cars more. Some of us will be more reluctant, like myself. But I think we are closer than we realize to that dream. And I'm thinking a decade. And it's all going to depend on a lot of factors, legislation, and cost, and et cetera. But that's a reality that is very close that we could do.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. I heard about like if you have all these cars parking lots are going to be different right because you don't have to account for somebody getting out of the car so it's fascinating what that world can do even just from a real estate perspective but we're not there yet yeah so in the meantime we have to have parking so our businesses stay strong but
- Speaker #0
a decade from now maybe the conversation changes when we accept that this is the new way park that one for now all right that one we'll pick that one up in a few years. See if I'm right. See if I'm right. You heard him refresh, folks. Mr. Benson says. No.
- Speaker #1
Well, with the industry evolving and there's obviously a lot of different areas within the automotive industry in general, where do you think there is going to be a lot of opportunity that people may not be thinking about? Mobile repair shop was something that I was learning about that I didn't know that was a thing until my quote went viral. And people were like, yeah, I make a lot of money doing mobile repair. What else do you think in regard to automotive that surprises people?
- Speaker #0
Well, you're right. So even the dealerships, like we had actually Justin Hansel at our shop about two weeks ago with his whole group, with his managers from the Petaluma stores. And they're talking about mobile stuff. Now, me personally as a mechanic, I don't like the idea of mobile mechanic because you don't have your entire shop with you. And sometimes you don't know what you're walking into, but you can do it. I mean, they have now even trailers that have car lifts that mechanics can use and bring a lift to the person's house and set up and do. I don't really see the why factor. Why? you know, has to be done. I mean, a tractor where it's huge and hard to, you know, move on a tow truck or whatever. Okay, that makes sense. Like mobile diesel mechanics is a real legitimate need and they make a huge money. But as far as an automotive car, even though it's a thing, I don't see that it's going to change the industry overnight. And you're right about the income, though. If you are a mobile mechanic, especially if you own the business, you can charge 200 plus dollars an hour, if not more, if it's emergency, right? You know, and people go, that sounds like a lot of money. If a lawyer can charge and a CPA can charge, I mean, a mechanic to cover all cars, you have to have a significant amount invested in tools and equipment nowadays. I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars if you're going to be trying to do everything. So why not make that kind of money?
- Speaker #1
It goes back to the value. Where we place value is where we see value. Yeah. Well, now you're teaching all these students. I'm sure you think about maybe even you as a student. What would you tell your younger self? or a student that's unsure of their path or the path through these programs that you're teaching, like what advice would you give them?
- Speaker #0
Well, first of all, I wasn't a great student. I did enough to pass and graduate and play football. Okay. So that was my metric. I was, I was a C student with A's, A's in auto shop and metal shop and, you know, C's on a good day and the rest. I wish I would have done better and focused, but again, that's not what I want to do. I'm not going to go write a book. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. Well, Realize your career has a lot of paperwork even when you're a mechanic. You have to articulate and be able to read and write and communicate with your service manager and your employees and your staff what you did to this vehicle so you can get paid. So the dealership can get paid. So I had to go back and retrain myself. A lot of things I should have learned in high school. And you won't realize that until a little bit later on, unfortunately. though more because you went and got your experience and you're like oh this is what they were trying you know i mean uh there's some times where i just look back and go i would probably done the same thing at 16 years old maybe that's an advantage for me in a way because you know we know mr doser is perfect but anyway i wish i would have told myself to be a little more patient and nicer to to people in high school i was you know i had one set focus just get out of here. play sports, become a mechanic and not really look back and kind of wish I would have been a little bit differently.
- Speaker #1
There's certain things that you maybe would have liked to have.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, a little more community-minded, I would say. You know, I was kind of in my own thing. I didn't get involved with too much outside the realm of the shop classes and sports overall.
- Speaker #1
Community is very important.
- Speaker #0
It's what makes everything work.
- Speaker #1
What do you love most about what you do? What do you hate?
- Speaker #0
Well, I mean, like I said in the beginning, I mean, I didn't realize how I thought when I signed up for the job. I'm going to come in, talk about cars, leave at 3.30. No, no. This is a, you live it. You think about it at night. You wake up thinking about it because essentially the way I explain it to people is you are creating an event for 90 people, 180-something days a year. And they're relying on you to be there. Now, I have not... Ever called in sick in six years, even when I should have. I've taken only a handful of days away for field trips because I realize what I teach, the kids can't do what they want to do, and that's be in the shop when I'm gone. It substitutes you can't have them in the shop. And that's what we do. That's what they want to be. And I feel bad, and we get behind. You know, we're pushing right to the end to finish all these big elaborate projects we have. We have an event tonight after this. We have an event tomorrow. We have an event Saturday. And next week, we've got a bunch more. Because it's the end of the year and we want to show off what the kids have done all year. So if we miss any of those days, it puts us actually behind quite a bit. So I'm very cognizant of that. So I must like the job because I'm here every day. I'm still here after six years.
- Speaker #1
I feel honored that you took an hour to speak with me then.
- Speaker #0
It's been great.
- Speaker #1
Well, what's the hardest part of your job or a thing that you're like, ugh?
- Speaker #0
Well, in the beginning, it was figuring out the funding, how to fund this stuff. because What I want to do is create an authentic environment. I don't want to just talk about cars. I want to do fun things that not only I enjoy, make it interesting for myself, but interesting for the kids, and so everybody's having fun. I mean, you go over there, it's like I said, we have NASCARs, we got CyberDucks and all this other fun stuff, Dyno. And I was trying to figure out how to fund that, because the way grants work, they're slow. So if a kid breaks a spark plug, I need it tomorrow. So we had to create a nonprofit, which is running on another separate. business and making all the relationships with the community. And unfortunately not saying no in the beginning because you feel like you're going to lose momentum. So weekend travels to go pick up free parts or donated this and that. That takes a lot of my time. And accounting for all this stuff, like where the money's going, how we're spending it, how much we have, board meetings with the nonprofit, et cetera. So it's a lot of extra stuff. Grading, I would hate to have to read 160 freshman English papers, but But my stuff, some of the parts we make take two hours to certify each part. So you got 60 students that two hours a pop to measure everything. This stuff has to be certified, measured. Sometimes go to a lab that takes an immense amount of time. And there's not a lot of time going when you're teaching six classes, especially. So that's the hard part of the job. But it's the job. And I love the job. And I hope to retire from here, to be honest with you. I don't foresee anything better coming up. That's five minutes away. At least my commute's the best part of my job, to be honest with you. I'm used to driving an hour and a half to work before.
- Speaker #1
Well, as we wrap up, I would like to ask you if there's anyone you'd like to thank for where you are today who has had a big impact on your journey.
- Speaker #0
Oh, gosh. There's so many, right? I have a 92-year-old grandfather. He's still around and still rides me like you won't believe. And, you know, part of that's good because he taught me a lot. And number one is hard work i'm up until recently i mean he was out working in his 90s so family mainly teachers that the shop teachers here you know gave me that confidence and i like to thank our students and our staff for having the confidence to take my class in the school to hire me in the first place because i walked in i thought i was i was like i'm out i'm out leaked here and i'm just this good mechanic guy how am i going to teach and be with all these highly educated great people you have here and you know i was wrong you know the Like I said, the staff are just amazing and professional. And I wouldn't want to work with a group of other people. I mean, if I'm going to be in the trenches with this group here. That's great. and the community of course because they really help us out yeah yeah it's community well it was a special special special place absolutely mr keith benson your skilled af thank you so much for being on the show i want you to keep doing what you're doing highlighting the trades because i think it's important anybody who's doing that right now because the trades for years have had um negative publicity especially in hollywood you know plumbers are never represented as being these highly intelligent individuals on TV and movies. mechanics, et cetera. And it couldn't be farther from the truth. These are very hardworking, very educated people in their fields. And I think we need to highlight that and show students what that looks like. And the shops nowadays are cleaner than an emergency room in some cases. So we need to continue showing that and get these kids out there in the workforce and show them that these jobs are fun, rewarding, and they pay well.
- Speaker #1
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the skilled AF podcast. If you enjoyed it, please rate, review, subscribe to it wherever you're listening. And if you want to stay connected, partner, you name it, head over to the skilled project.com or follow us on social media at the skilled project until next time. Stay skilled AF.
