Eric Vos thanks his employer and family after accepting the award on Wednesday. Photo: Tom Berg
2 min to read
Eric Vos thanks his employer and family after accepting the award on Wednesday. Photo: Tom Berg
For the second year in a row, Eric Vos, a technician for FedEx Freight, finished the TMC SuperTech competition as overall Grand Champion. Vos, of Boise, Idaho, also won the 2015 contest, beating out hundreds of other technicians who took multiple oral, written and skills tests over several days at the Raleigh, N.C., Convention Center.
Winners in general were lavished with prizes, including cash, gift cards, tools and equipment donated by many sponsors. Vos and his wife can attend a NASCAR race early next year.
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Scores of industry volunteers from schools, trucking companies and equipment suppliers work on the competition throughout the year. WheelTime, a major service provider, is a principal sponsor.
The 2016 SuperTech event finished with a celebratory luncheon on Wednesday, during the Technology & Maintenance Council of ATA’s fall meeting. Scores of other competitors won various events, from engines and electrical and braking systems to trailer couplers, and some, like Vos, won several times.
Among other things, Vos shared the Team Competition award with MarkMcLean, a fellow FedEx Freight tech and himself a two-time Grand Champion winner, in 2013 and 2014.
McLean, of Montgomery, N.Y., also was this year’s overall Second Place winner , while Steven Weaver, still another FedExFreight tech, finished Third. This is the second year in a row that the carrier’s technicians swept the first three places in the overall competition, including Grand Champion.
“We hire the best people we can,” said Mike Ducker, the company’s president and CEO, after last year’s announcements. FedEx Freight supports SuperTech with its own internal competition which commences every year in April. Winners of there go on to the national program later, and Vos, McLean and Weaver were among those it sent this year.
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“We allow them the time to participate, and we more than recover that when they return” through superior work and esprit built among other FedEx Freight technicians, said Ducker.
In the TMCFutureTech competition Daniel Hanna from Forsyth Technical Community College finished second and Clancy Johnson from Utah Valley University finished third. TMC also announced that Matthew Adams of Francis Tuttle Technology Center, Oklahoma City, had won Velociti’s TMCFutureTech National Student Technician Skills Competition and Scott Davidson of TravelCenters of America had won the first-ever trailer technician competition at TMCSuperTech.
TMC is assembling a list of the various winners, which can be found here.
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