Wayne King, a tire changer at Gossco Retreading in St. Johnsbury, Vt., and Dick Nordness, executive director of the Northwest Tire Dealers Association in Kennewick, Wash., are the first recipients of the International Tire & Rubber Association's (ITRA) Dwight Peel Scholarships.
Each will receive $1,000 toward the cost of attending ITRA's Commercial Tire Service Instructor Training and Certification program.
The scholarship was named after a 17-year-old tire changer from Canada who was killed three years ago when a truck tire he was inflating blew off its rim and struck him in the head. It is "designed to educate commercial service technicians to avoid this and other risks associated with servicing commercial tire and wheel assemblies," according to ITRA officials.
Dwight Peel Scholarships are awarded to organizations with less than $2 million in sales who receive no training assistance from their suppliers and can't afford to attend ITRA's Commercial Tire Service program.
ITRA has approved eight more scholarships "to be awarded in the near future."
Applications can be downloaded from the group's www.itra.com Web site or by calling ITRA at (800) 426-8835.
