Page 321 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

ThinkBIG is a major avenue for bring- ing technical talent into our organization. We pay close attention to attitude and values. We’d much rather train someone with a good attitude than hire a top-notch mechanic with a bad attitude.
– Duane Doyle Sr., owner and CEO, Peterson-Cat
program that alternates between the college class- room environment and on-the-job training at a Cat dealership in eight-week increments. The Cat-specific program incorporates general diesel technology, basic equipment systems, and current technology with some course work in mathematics and technical writing. And, unlike other programs that try to help you find a job, ThinkBIG students already have one2. Once they graduate, they step up to fulltime.
“ThinkBIG is a major avenue for bringing tech- nical talent into our organization,” says Duane Doyle Sr., Peterson owner/CEO. “For us, it’s not just about skills and ability. We pay close atten- tion to attitude and values. We’d much rather train someone with a good attitude than hire a top- notch mechanic with a bad attitude. The key is to front-load the pipeline with the right kids and keep it as full as possible. It’s a great program—a solid program. And we’re very happy with it.” The students are too. Since its inception in 2002, Peter- son’s ThinkBIG program has enjoyed a completion rate of 80 percent and retention rate of 66 percent, which is much higher than the 30 percent of tra- ditional technical schools. And with 241 students (year-end 2020), and 34 graduating classes, that spells S-U-C-C-E-S-S.
SKILLED TRADES VERSUS COLLEGE
Caterpillar came up with the ThinkBIG concept in the 1990s after state funding for high school vocational education started drying up in favor of the college-prep track. That shift left a whole demographic of mechanical, hands-on types with nowhere to go. Caterpillar saw the looming need and decided to jump in before it became cata- strophic.They took special note of Ford’s Asset ap- prenticeship program from the 1970s and started developing their own. In May 1998, Cat debuted its ThinkBIG pilot program at Illinois Central
College in Peoria and then began rolling it out nationwide. Currently, there are eleven regional programs inside the US and ten more around the world including Mexico, Panama, South America, Canada, England, South Africa, and China. After twenty years, it’s beginning to make a dent in the global skills deficit.
But there’s still a long way to go. “It’s a shame kids are not afforded the choice to go into the trades at the high school level anymore,” says Duane Sr., who took full advantage of shop class during the 1970s. “Schools, administrators, and parents have discouraged their kids from blue collar jobs. They want them to go to college and pursue the white-collar workforce, which traditionally pays better. And once they let these vocational pro- grams go, it’s hard to bring them back because of the millions it would cost to retool.”
2 Peterson’s ThinkBIG students are employees that get paid during their rotations at the dealership during the program.
Duane Sr. at Warm Springs Dam in Healdsburg, California in 1979
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