With more than 470 locations, Sun Auto Tire & Service Inc., which is based in Mesa, Ariz., is one of the five biggest dealerships on the 2024 MTD 100.
But despite its size, Sun Auto Tire says finding qualified technicians can be a challenge.
“It’s not a new dynamic,” says Chris Ripani, the company’s chief operating officer. “But it becomes a more exponential dynamic as we grow and the talent pool continues to shrink.”
The increasing complexity of vehicles only compounds the problem, he notes.
“What it means to be a technician today is different than what it was 40 years ago. There’s a lot more variation to vehicles.
“There’s more diagnostics — and a lot more specialization and advanced tools required.
“Finding someone who has the mechanical skill set and wants to invest in themselves is not an easy task," says Ripani.
“Companies that have great technicians hold onto them dearly and it’s one of the biggest industry challenges for recruiting.”
Employee retention also is crucial, he explains. “One of the things we’re doing is investing in training programs and processes. We created my Sun University,” an online and in-class program that was introduced last year.
“It’s designed around building learning tasks by role for each key role within the company. It outlines the learning path we want them to take and the content we’ve assigned to each role.
“We’ve designed it to ensure our people can continue to increase their skills while investing in their career development.
“We’ve also launched a system called SunPro. It’s our way of doing things in the back of the shop. It’s all about the quality control of our service standards and how we build an operating model to do preventive maintenance service, repair and tire replacement consistently across our entire network.
“In addition, it outlines our training templates that we then build into Sun University,” he adds.
