WANT TO FIX TRUCKS? 5 Skills Auto Techs will Need for Diesel/Heavy Equipment

Hi everybody. One of the things that I have heard from a lot of people on YouTube and TikTok and Facebook is that a lot of the mechanics out there that started out in automotive are thinking about transitioning to diesel or heavy equipment and a question I get a lot of the time is what do I need to know, is it difficult or a lot of other questions along those lines. So what I wanted to do is talk about the five skills that someone is going to need to have and to improve upon if they make that transition. Number one is understanding air systems. Air brakes is not something you have in the automotive world so you need to understand some basics about pneumatics, valves, how the ABS system in an air system works versus a hydraulic brake system, just basic hydraulic or air brake system tests. So air brakes would be one that you would probably want to put some focus on if you're making that transition. Number two that I wrote down here is fuel systems. Diesels have a variety of different ways of providing fuel to the cylinders. When we put fuel in the cylinder, how we put fuel in the cylinder, what the effect of the fuel is in the cylinder is all slightly different than what you're used to dealing with on gasoline engines. So understanding, maybe doing a little bit of research into high pressure common rail, UI, pump line nozzles, Huey, just doing a little bit of research into those fuel systems definitely will help make that transition a little bit easier. The next thing I wrote down is driving rigs and heavy equipment. As a heavy equipment mechanic or a diesel mechanic, you are going to have to be able to drive a big rig, a semi, not to the skill level that an over-the-road truck driver has, but enough to do a quick test drive around a yard, pulling in and out of bays, doing things like that, hooking up trailers, disconnecting trailers on heavy equipment. Again, you don't need to be able to dig a ditch as well as someone that operates a backhoe 10 hours a day, but you at least need to know, hey, when I pull this lever, the bucket does this, right? So you've got to have some familiarity with the equipment. So being able to drive the equipment, being able to operate the equipment, a big part of being able to inspect the equipment and making sure it can do its job right. So that would be number three. Number four would be tool upgrades. All right, your basic set of tools that may work great working on a VW or a Ford car or a little Chevy Malibu, you know, those things, you're going to need probably to get some bigger wrenches, bigger sockets, bigger impacts, so bigger torque wrenches, some of that stuff. So there might be some changes in what tools you might need versus what you already have. Not a whole lot, but a little bit. Number five is learning diesel diagnostic tools. In the automotive industry, the guys there are really, really good at electrical diagnostics if they have experience under their belt. They understand oscilloscopes and waveform patterns and they're good at that. So I don't think this part is going to be extremely difficult for most people transitioning from auto to diesel. They just got to learn the specific softwares, which is not hard at all. Learning how maybe to navigate a Cummins Insight or a CAD electronic technician or using a diesel laptop or, you know, and like I said, if they've got experience using automotive scan tools, this is just a another leap in a not a harder direction, but just a different direction. I don't think that, you know, out of those five things, I don't think I listed anything there that would indicate that I feel like diesel technician is harder than being an automotive technician. I honestly just think it's a slightly different skill set, but if you are a good technician working on cars, you can become a good technician working on trucks and heavy equipment. You just got to learn a few different things that you may not already have in your toolkit and maybe even unlearn a few things that you might have in your toolkit. I think, honestly, if I had to put it myself in the shoes of someone doing a transition like that, I feel like if I was an automotive mechanic and was learning to become a diesel or heavy equipment mechanic, that I would have an easier transition going to the diesel heavy equipment side than the other way around, where if all I've ever worked on was big tractor trailers and heavy equipment and I went to the auto side, I mean, to me, I think that would be harder. I'm sure there's a lot of heavy equipment guys out there right now going, shut up, you know, and there's probably a lot of auto guys maybe that are looking at a, you know, a cat backhoe going, uh, but honestly that's how I feel about it. You look behind me on the wall, I got the ASE certifications, I got the ASE heavy duty truck master certification, and right above it, the silver one, there's a couple of automotive ASE certifications. I tell you what, taking the electrical in diesel and taking the electrical in auto, two different planets, man. I had a much harder time and a much lower passing score on the automotive one than I did the diesel one, but yeah, transitioning is something that you have to make a decision and it's a brave decision, especially when you got years of experience under your belt and you're making that move. If you're making the move early, the fundamentals are the same. An engine's an engine, right? It's got a crankshaft, it's got pistons, it's got a cylinder head, it's got an intake valve, an exhaust valve, a cam shaft. The cam shaft has to be timed to the crankshaft. There's a lot of stuff that is, it's the same, right? Electrical doesn't do new magic ---- just because it's on a diesel or heavy equipment, right? Electrical current still works and operates the same way, so you're not, you're not really facing an uphill battle. You just got to be able to understand that it takes some effort going either direction, but I wish all the guys that mentioned it to me that are doing that transition, I wish them all the luck in the world. We do need more diesel and heavy equipment mechanics. The industry's really bad. I know this far back as 2010 when I was a service manager at a Ford dealership that I only had one guy that was certified to do the warranty work on the four diesels, and I was trying every day to get some of the other mechanics in that shop to get certified on diesel, just to take some of the workload off this poor guy, and they all looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language as soon as the word diesel came out of my mouth, so it is hard to convince people to make that leap, so I'm hoping that more of you guys will do it. If you have any questions about the transition that I haven't talked about, I'd be more than happy to go over them with you. Just let me know in the comments, and please like, subscribe, help the channel grow, become a channel member to get more exclusive videos too. Thanks guys!