Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 186: How To Attract Young People To The Refrigeration Trade With Rusty Walker

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Episode 186: How To Attract Young People To The Refrigeration Trade With Rusty Walker · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Rusty: And I talk to a lot of young technicians. I never knew this when I was a kid because I'm from that generation, but they say, well, I want to work life balance the way of refrigeration ran when I was young. There was no such thing as a work life balance. How do we address that with the younger generation who says, Yeah, I don't have to work all the time.
• 0:01
  I should have a more family time. And I talked to contractors all the time. About how they reorganize their call sheet. You know, maybe you're on call one day a week. That's going to be part of bringing these younger people in is really learning how to balance the call sheet as well.
• 0:02
  Trevor: Welcome to the Refrigeration Mentor Podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm your host Trevor Matthews. As a former technician turned entrepreneur, my goal is to really help train you, educate you, and mentor you in the commercial refrigeration industry. Each week I'm going to have top guests from technicians. to manufacturers, to experts around the world, to really help us grow and learn together by sharing their knowledge in commercial refrigeration, commercial HVAC.
• 0:04
  And not only on the technical side, but really the professional and the personal development side as well. I'm really excited that you're here. Now let's get a conversation going.
• 0:05
  Hey, hey. I wanna take a minute to talk about the upcoming refrigeration mentor learning programs. Every couple of months we continue to roll out live instructor-led sessions by subject matter experts on compressors, supermarket, refrigeration, and CO2 refrigeration. We're really here to help you grow. Get to that next level.
• 0:06
  Head to the Refrigeration Mentor webpage, refrigerationmentor. com. Check out the events page. There's a compressor masterclass, there's a supermarket refrigeration program, and there's a CO2 program. There's also free trainings, free workshops. Really, check them out. See if this interests you. Read a little bit about it because we're really here to help you.
• 0:07
  These live sessions are for you to come and ask questions, to learn a little bit, to grow. We've trained thousands of technicians from technicians from three to four to five years in the industry, all the way up from 20 to 30 years in the industry, either get them to the next level or get them back on track, build that confidence, that knowledge and that skill set.
• 0:08
  We'd love to see you there. We'd love to have you now. Let's get a conversation going. Welcome to the 2024 AHR Expo. I'm your host Trevor Matthews of this podcast today with my good friend, Rusty Walker. Hey, welcome. So I invited Rusty to come out and chat with me because once again, he's a legend, the refrigeration industry for training and his granddaughter just told me a good story about his granddaughter.
• 0:09
  Rusty: My granddaughter says, Papa, tell him you're not a legend. You know, Papa, stop it.
• 0:10
  Trevor: And I'm excited to have him here because he just, he's 25 years. Uh, lots of thousands and thousands and thousands of technicians. Throughout the, your career as a technician, as a trainer, as an educator, and you just made a massive move in your career and I want to talk, let's start off with that and then we'll get into a little bit about your history, but now you're with the NSARC, really good friends of mine, Danielle, Morgan, Gene, I love that, that crew there and uh, let's talk about that first.
• 0:11
  Rusty: All right. So, so I love teaching the technicians. I think that we're really in a bad position about growing our field and growing the technicians and we keep, we've been having this conversation for five, six years. How do we bring the young people in? All the older guys are going away. And so I saw an opportunity where I could go beyond where I was and really seriously kind of come up with a plot.
• 0:12
  a training platform for everybody. And if we don't, you know, I've worked this trade my whole life. And if we don't get and reach out to the young people. and get some of these people in the trade, it's just going to vanish. And who's going to take care of the food when nobody else is there? So I really felt a calling to expand.
• 0:13
  And with NASRC, I really get an opportunity to do that. Train on all manufacturers. I get to do, I get to go out and teach the teachers, you know, how many times you go to a trade school and you want to hire somebody from a trade school and. The kid knows how to change the condensing unit. No, no, no. We got to, we got to induce controllers.
• 0:14
  We got to talk about, uh, some of the things that really help with this refrigeration side of the market. So I get an opportunity to work with the trainers and so that I think it's going to be a place where hopefully I can make a difference a little bit. That's what I really want. I want to leave a legacy like everybody else, you know, and so that's what I'm hoping to do.
• 0:15
  And that's why I did it
• 0:16
  Trevor: bigger platform. Yeah. And that's what I love about the NSA is see, they really care about. the workforce of Elm. They care about the refrigeration technique. I'm biased. I'm refrigeration. True and true. I know you're at an HVAC event right now, but it's all refrigeration for me. But what's great about, um, that organization is that they're really changing the way it's been done, right?
• 0:17
  By bringing more training to the technicians, to the contractors and The next one's in, uh, Philadelphia in March, which I'm super excited about. Or Pittsburgh, sorry. Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, yeah. Yeah, Pittsburgh in March, so I'm excited about that. Uh, let's talk a little bit about the, the history of training and see how it evolved, because I know that with this platform, with the NSARC, there's going to be a lot of cool things with the new technology.
• 0:18
  But let's talk about the way training was and the way we're evolving, because that, that's the thing that we all need to understand. Anybody I talked about when, like, Back in the 90s, refrigeration changed and it evolved a bit, but it hasn't been evolving the way it has today because of, one, social media, technology, advancements, efficiencies, regulations.
• 0:19
  Let's talk about what it was, because you've seen it all, you went through it all, and how it's going forward.
• 0:20
  Rusty: Thanks for making me feel old, first of all, by asking it all. I appreciate that. Um, but, but if you go back far enough, you know, at one time, First of all, technology, you're absolutely right. We had the gang clocks forever.
• 0:21
  We had the same things and it would nothing change. I remember when I first saw my first all tech control, right? Cause we didn't have that. We had pressure switches, we had all these different things. And so there wasn't a lot of changes and we could, uh, grow there. But what we did more of that we don't do around anymore.
• 0:22
  We used to have ride alongs. We'd hire a young kid, and the kid could work with us for a year, we could mentor him, we could show him, you know, first we did the work and let him watch us, then our good mentors, our good teachers would say, okay, now you do it. And, and they would actually watch the kid work and pump the rack down and change the contact or whatever it was.
• 0:23
  And so, then we got away from that because, you know, and there's going to be, there's going to be a day of reckoning. Because now we don't want to send two guys out. I'm not going to pay for some kid to sit there and follow you around. And, and we don't have the apprenticeships like we used to. We used to have, uh, really good, uh, and our, and the older guys used to be better mentors.
• 0:24
  Well, let me change that. They were not good mentors. They, they would make us cry if they could. And, but. By that it, it, it was trial by fire. Yeah. So when I was out there at three o'clock in the morning and I, and everything's going to hell, and, and, and the, the store managers yelling at me, why don't I have the ice cream fixed yet?
• 0:25
  And, and all that. I was, we were burnt. Taught by fire. I know. Yeah. How to handle that and just say, dude, here's the screwdriver. Fix it and call me when you're done. Yeah. Right. We, we were tougher and we were able to handle that. And, and, and that is gone. 'cause we don't have that. Tough love, and we don't have the ride alongs anymore.
• 0:26
  I thought that was one of the best things ever. I had great mentors, both when I was an engineer and when I was a technician. And we miss that. We don't have that anymore like we used to. And a lot of the guys who were good mentors are in Key West, now drinking pina coladas. And so, my destination eventually.
• 0:27
  So, so I think that's what I'm missing. Now, I love Canada, you know, being Canadian. I love the way they still have a, they still have a trade school. You still have to go to school. You, you go to school, you work. And then as you progress, you go to more school or less school and you have to have a four year, five year program.
• 0:28
  And those are the things we need. Not, you know, not, not. I'm not anti website, I'm not anti online training, but we have to have it in our hands when we're touching the equipment. Then let's augment that. That's our future, right? Let's augment what we did, what we taught you when we taught you to, you know, uh, uh, we let you get an oil bath when you take your first compressor apart, right?
• 0:29
  That's part of the learning process. So now let's continue to do that, but let's augment that with online. Okay, hey look, you went through this? Here's a refresher on how separators work. You know, oil separators. Oil is one of the hardest things for kids to learn. We don't pay people to sit on a bucket anymore.
• 0:30
  You know, we used to, we used to have guys, you know, and by sitting on a bucket, I just mean sometimes like oil, you just have to sit there and wait. And we don't allow that process to sink in so we don't let the people learn. And that's all about, Oh yeah, I remember that, I did that last time. And that's how we learn.
• 0:31
  So, that's where I think we are, and we need to get back to that. I'd love to see us get back to ride alongs, spend a year with a, with a senior tech. Um, I'd love to see more apprenticeship type programs. You know, uh, where we put our hand, cause, and if I'm going on too much, please stop me. No, that's beautiful.
• 0:32
  But, uh, if, if, if you're a refrigeration guy, if you're in the trades, the one thing, I've traveled all over the country, I've called Canada, Mexico, India, and the one thing about refrigeration people, they're the same person. I don't care if you're in India. If you're in California, you're in Hawaii or Alaska, we're the same guy.
• 0:33
  Right? Yeah. And, and that means we're visual learners. We're not good. The guys that are gonna sit there in class taking notes, we're visual. So, so that's what we have to understand who we are and then how do we, how do we tap into that? Yeah. And that's why I think apprenticeship programs are great and ride ride arms are
• 0:34
  Trevor: great too.
• 0:35
  Yeah. And I, I see, I, I totally agree with you. Apprenticeship programs are, are key. But on top of that, there's a bigger responsibility for the contractors, I believe, as well, as well as the end users. Absolutely. And I think that it got away where the contractors for many years, as I came up, they were trading journeymen.
• 0:36
  That's what I call it. You know, good journeymen would go to one contractor, the next contractor, the next contractor. And then the regulations came in that was tighter, the wages started to go up a little bit, and it was harder and harder to have two guys in a job. But I see in a point where for years it went along where all these journeymen were going around in circle and then less and less apprentices coming up the, up the train.
• 0:37
  Less and less talking about it with, uh, you know, with other people. We're good at talking about insider industry. I mean, you're good talking about me and a lot of the people here. We can talk refrigeration all day and night. But it's getting the people outside the industry. And I like what you said there is that, you know, we need that hands on learning.
• 0:38
  And that's what refrigeration mentor training is all about. I can come and provide the knowledge on these online platform, but at the end of the day they need to go out and apply that stuff and it's all about that application and you don't have to be the most experienced, but you gotta be willing to be able to go out there and at least have someone with you on those big ones.
• 0:39
  The first time you've pumped down a rack. I've done it the first time by myself. That was so stressful. I didn't know what I was doing.
• 0:40
  Rusty: And then when we go to the naturals, that acerbates it, right? Because the students If I can, you know, I'm hoping the internet doesn't last much longer because if, if I could shut social media down because people want to post things on, on social media wouldn't like you're talking about, right?
• 0:41
  And, and, and they want to say, Oh, this happened in that pump down and it blew up and this happened in this. And it adds to what you were just saying that, that, that, that hesitancy to some young people to pull the trigger. And we need to stop doing that. We need to, we need to be more positive about that.
• 0:42
  Um, And if I may, I don't mean to take all your time, but one of the things I would say, I want to add to what I said before, add on to what you said, we got to start at high school. Yeah. I mean, the, the, the. Grade school. When I was, when I was young, you know, you, you, you got two years of high school and then you got to make a decision.
• 0:43
  You could go to finish up kind of in a trade type of. Um, uh, performance, carpentry, electricians, whatever, and then, or you could go to high school because you're going to go to college or whatever, and, and I would love to see more counselors and guidance people, you know, follow Mike Rowe's example, right?
• 0:44
  Yeah. Really try to push the trades more and more in trade schools, and we gotta upgrade the trade schools as well.
• 0:45
  Trevor: Yeah, and I see that, that's a big, big issue even in Canada for, uh, I've seen across the country, I travel and work all across Canada, but I see consistently high schools, uh, removing trade programs.
• 0:46
  Yeah. There was none, none of that where I was from in my, in my town. There was, I think we had carpentry and maybe plumbing. That was it. And when I was in high school, but then when you go to the bigger cities like Toronto and Ontario, they used to have these mechanical programs. And over the years I've talked with different tech schools, they're saying like the less and less high schools even have this as an option.
• 0:47
  And then you said a good thing about the guidance counselor. When I finished high school, when I was at, they were pushing me for university. So that's what I did. I went to university, took a business diploma and got that because I was like, You're not going to get a job if you don't go to university.
• 0:48
  That was, uh, was it helpful? Okay, sure, I went and spent 40, 000, 50, 000. You know, good way to learn how to spend a lot of money, but it wasn't, it wasn't really helping me in my growth and my professional development. Then I got and found refrigeration. I think this is the key. What we got to figure out collectively is how do we target and get people that don't have a clue about refrigeration.
• 0:49
  And I think that's more of us talking with friends and family, more of the industry. Manufacturers, uh, end users, all of us talking to people outside refrigeration. Because how are people outside refrigeration going to find out about it if no one talks about it? I got found out about it by luck. Yeah. A guy at a school.
• 0:50
  You know what I mean? I was going for a different program and he told me about HVAC and refrigeration and he said I can make 50 an hour. I'm like, I'm in. I'm in. I'm making 14 an hour now. And so that's how I started. Didn't know what refrigeration was, I didn't even know like how refrigeration worked, I didn't know you had to service it or maintenance it.
• 0:51
  So, and like you said, high school would be a good start. I've even gone to grade schools and started talking about it.
• 0:52
  Rusty: Absolutely. You know, it's, it's funny. If you tell somebody, think about this. If you tell somebody that you're, you're on the airplane, right? I'm on a plane and I'm talking to somebody and say, they say, oh yeah, what are you doing?
• 0:53
  Oh, I'm a refrigeration guy. I work in refrigeration. They go, you know. My refrigerator is not making ice and I'm like, I don't do ice machines, I don't do, I, I, well you said, no, no, no, no, no, you know you go in the grocery store, you see that thing where the ice cream is? Oh yeah, well that's like a refrigerator, right?
• 0:54
  And, and, and at that point, you know, you start, your head starts to hurt. Nobody knows what we do, we're a very small, and I like to say DMX Army, right, that was my guidance counselor told me to go to. You're gonna go to President of the Engineering Army, so. I hit with the Army. But, and I learned a lot about that, but we need to get that camaraderie that I found in the army, that kind of, if you would brotherhood kind of thing, we need to teach people that if you come into refrigeration, it's the same kind of bonding thing that we, that we have together, you know, and we got to teach young people about that because if you and I go to dinner, if any of these guys sit out here, we go to lunch together.
• 0:55
  I guarantee you, we're not going to talk about a football game, we're not going to talk about NASCAR, well maybe NASCAR, but um, we're going to talk about what? Refrigeration. That's just what we do. What profession is so obsessed, but yet we can't teach other people to come join our obsession. And that's what we need to do.
• 0:56
  Like you said, elementary schools, I'm loving them. Put a big public sign out there, or some grocery store, Walmart, Wegmans, whoever, and let's just work through them to help develop young people as well. Because they're the one that's going to
• 0:57
  Trevor: suffer. And that's a good point there. And this is what I've seen happening over the years and the years.
• 0:58
  Um, end users, you know, they're always struggling to get, you know, depending where they're at, how big their stores are, how many there are, to get more professionals, refrigeration professionals to come in and Fix them at a right time and matter. It's not what we do is not rocket science, but it's a highly skilled trade It is a highly skilled, you know, so you need to understand the safeties of it because we work with electrical We will work with chemicals, but the advantages that are way more like lots of people are saying oh, it's so complex You know co2 you got our 290 812 all this stuff But at the end of the day if you're taught properly It goes back to education if you're taught and shown how what to do You can do it.
• 0:59
  Anyone can do it. It's no different than, you know, my aunt. She's 70 or 80 years old. Never used a phone before, but if we let her play on the iPhone for a few weeks, she'll be able to use a message and she'll be able to make a phone call and, you know, it just takes training.
• 1:00
  Rusty: It is all an exposure, right?
• 1:01
  And one of the points is, look at, so we're struggling with this vitamin. Look how many grocery store chains now. are moving in house. Yeah. Because I know, I know contractors who've gone and said, you know what? We'll take 10 of your stores, but the 20 you want to give us, we don't have the people to do it.
• 1:02
  We, we can't cover it. And then of course, we all, we all know the boogeyman is the call sheet. And, um, and, and, and, and, and so, so that, I think that amplifies the problem is when the retailer themselves. are going to spend the money, like device display fixtures and some of these things and when they're going to spend the money to train their people because nobody else is and they can't, whatever, that just shows the shortage and how important it is for us.
• 1:03
  Yeah. You know what you do is awesome to try to reach some of these guys, right?
• 1:04
  Trevor: You have a good point there. I work with display. I love the crew there. But it's not like it's not that they. Hopefully they don't want to do it to try to, you know, reduce what it costs because they need to pay their technicians more in house like this is what I think see a lot of people think it's not easy to start up a refrigeration business in house like this is hands down display been doing it for 30, 40 years and that's why they got where they're at.
• 1:05
  That's why they're so good at what they do, but they're a
• 1:06
  Rusty: model. I know other retailers who have gone to display Canada. Yeah, and and they're trying to model their in house program on that, but it is. It is so much money. Like you said, it's so difficult to get the right people, but it just amplifies the deficiencies, right?
• 1:07
  And they're part of the problem. The retailers are part of the problem because of what they want to pay for
• 1:08
  Trevor: my call, right? And that's the thing. I was doing some research for a presentation that I'm doing later today on workforce development. So I dove into ZipRecruiter, it's, I, I, I think it, you know, I don't know if it's the, one of the largest ones in North America to find jobs, I, I think anyway, in the U.
• 1:09
  S., and I looked it up and I wrote HVAC jobs, and so anything in an HVAC, it came up 125, 000 openings, so not tech, only technicians, but engineers and sales people, and then, and then I dove in a little, and then I checked out what their, the low, the entry level is, was like 35 I think maybe 41, 000, and the highest was like 80, 000, so that, that was on this side.
• 1:10
  I know for sure great HVAC technicians get paid way more than that. Then I looked at the refrigeration, uh, side of it, and I think there was 16, 000 job openings for refrigeration, which is way more highly skilled, uh, in supermarket application versus other ones. And then I looked at, uh, the last 30 day post, and I think there's 5, 000 job openings.
• 1:11
  And then I looked at the wage. It was less than HVAC, uh, for the entry level and less for the higher level. Then I went in to look for a marketing job. There's like 300 some thousand, uh, job openings in the next 30, last 30 days. And the, the introductory to our marketing, uh, role to, you know, an expert, they started like 12,000 more than, uh, an HVAC and a refrigeration technician.
• 1:12
  And then they were double the price in the top end double. Wow. You know, and this is just little things I've been doing, and even electricians, they get paid more than, uh, refrigeration and electrician's. A very important trade. And, uh, the, it's, uh, depending on what you do, it's. It's dangerous just like refrigeration, but we do that, we do that, you do that in
• 1:13
  Rusty: refrigeration.
• 1:14
  It's funny, and the way, electricians make more than we do on the field, but yet we still have to terminate their wires, like you never can figure that out, you know, no, no, no, no, let me terminate the evaporators, I'm good, you can go pull them up, and I'm not dogging and sparky, I'm not saying anything bad about electricians, but I'm just saying a lot of times we have, and they get paid more than us, and so I always find that interesting, and, um,
• 1:15
  Trevor: And the thing is, is like the hours that we have to put in, like, in refrigeration, like, we work, I work so many nights, I work night shift for months, years, and I did on calls, and I did, and which I was, I was okay doing it, because I liked the money, I didn't mind doing it, I was young at the time, but as I got older in my career, I had kids, I wasn't into that on call as much.
• 1:16
  But I was still into the money. So how do you how do you do that transition? So that's you got to bring more value to organization and how do you do that? So I talked to a lot of technicians who are trying to transition, you know from the technician to the more, you know The less on call so
• 1:17
  Rusty: you can do it you you can do it and it's a struggle But some of us you know, um One of the problems like everybody talks about, and I talked to a lot of young technicians, and, and I never knew this when I was a kid because I'm from that generation, um, but they, they say, well I want to work life balance.
• 1:18
  And, and the way refrigeration ran when I was young, there was no such thing as a work life balance. And so how do, like you just said, how do we address that with the younger generation who, who says, Yeah, I don't have to work all the time. I, I should have a more family time. And that's, that's what, and I talk to contractors all the time about how they reorganize their call sheet.
• 1:19
  You know, when I was in, when I was at AS, we went Friday to Friday. You pulled whatever you're in Atlanta and you're running in the summer. You worked, you got your hundred hours in, but, but now you see them, you know, maybe you're on call one day a week and then not again for, you know, in, in, in, that's going to be part of bringing these younger people in is really learning how to balance the call sheet as well.
• 1:20
  Yeah.
• 1:21
  Trevor: And I heard this time and time again, too, is like. balance. You know, what does that mean? It's different for everybody. My work life balance was I want to smash 65 70 hours this week. That's my work life. And then I have my time. And schedule myself. And that's what it was. If it was a weekend, I was working on work that weekend.
• 1:22
  And then you make the decision. If you work with the contractor and you tell them. At the start of the year, you get non negotiables. Like your, your kid's birthday maybe. Or maybe it's Christmas. I can't be on call. But you, if you work that out in the beginning of the year, your whole year you can set up your on call schedules.
• 1:23
  You know when you're at. You work as a team, you know. And then if you get stuck, say, listen, I can't make it. My kid's sick. Can you, Rusty, can you fill in for me? You will, you know what I mean? If you could, you know, and that's the way it is in the refrigeration
• 1:24
  Rusty: teams. I work. Yeah. Well, and if we don't keep doing it, everybody always asks me, why can't we get young people?
• 1:25
  It's a different mindset now. And, um, but I still go back to, I think, I think we have to manage the time, the call sheet. I think I talked to a lot of young kids who, who will get into the trade and they'll work for a year or something. And they'll finally say, you know what, I'm going to do something different.
• 1:26
  Yeah. Right. And, and we're not training them well enough, we're putting them in situations, I see a lot of apprentice going to a job and, and they're called, they're on the call sheet, and they should not be on that call, they absolutely should not be on that call, especially if it's a CO2 and you've never touched it, now they're scared to death because somebody on Facebook said, oh, if you do this it'll blow up, and it's like, oh my god, you know, and I feel sorry for the younger technicians, I had an old guy yell at me the whole time, so I loved it, you know, he wouldn't let me do anything stupid.
• 1:27
  The names he called me were the same as my drill sergeant, so I really didn't care. But, we don't do, so I, I just, I'm constantly in conflict on that myself.
• 1:28
  Trevor: Well, I think once again it comes back to us educating the public about it. You know, coming back to talk about the values of it, because you can work anywhere in the world with this.
• 1:29
  You can make a hundred, two hundred, three hundred thousand dollars a year on it. As a technician, I've seen it. Oh yeah. Does it take work? Yes. But anybody that makes that amount of money puts the work in. You know, I don't know anyone that makes two hundred grand a year and doesn't put the work in. No, it's not, it's not, no role just gives you money like that.
• 1:30
  So, but if you put the work in, you learn, you take the training, and you grow yourself. You can go anywhere with this refrigeration trade. Recession proof?
• 1:31
  Rusty: When, when we hit recessions, where are you, what is one of the first thing you're going to cut out? Eating out. So you're not going to the restaurant, so where do you have to go if you're not eating in the restaurant?
• 1:32
  You have to buy groceries. And so the grocery store has to function, and so we're as recession proof as you can possibly be, right? And, and, the, the, the misconception that we're not high skilled. Think about all the like, look at all the controllers right now. I can name off seven different controllers without working that hard.
• 1:33
  If you're going to go to naturals, if you want to go into natural refrigerants, you have to be able to understand what a Modbus is. You have to know and understand what the hell BACnet is. If you don't know, you're not going to be able to handle the case controllers. You have to know what the sensors are doing, the inputs, the outputs.
• 1:34
  You have to understand what sensor works with what. Me personally, I've been teaching, I've been trying to teach the world that we use an oscilloscope. I've got this little pocket oscilloscope I use for troubleshooting bypass. Instead of somebody going, Unplug that. Are we good? You're online? We're good. No, no.
• 1:35
  The other one. It's offline. Simply put an oscilloscope on there and you can cut your troubleshooting time in half. But so, so not only do we have to have the young people, we also have to teach how to, we have to be as smart as our tools now. Cause our tool, we're not as smart as our tools. If you're walking in, you know.
• 1:36
  And you have no idea what I'm talking about and you don't, I said don't cross your polarities and you're like, what? What's polarities mean? Yeah, go to the truck, daddy be done and I'll come out there when I'm done. Right? If you don't understand that vocabulary, you don't understand what, and that's what we, and I just don't know how we, how we force them to learn.
• 1:37
  Trevor: Yeah, I don't think it's forcing them to learn, it's embracing it. And like I hear people saying, complaining, oh drives, oh more controllers that I have to learn. But that starts above the technician because if they had leaders or managers or, or, or owners that, that embrace the training and the new technology, the new technology, because I love it.
• 1:38
  And, you know, there's lots of people that, you know, it's different. There's a lot to learn, but people don't like change. I think that's what it is. And I think it's putting a fear factor in other people coming into the industry. I love new technology. I love my brand new iPhone that I got as an upgrade.
• 1:39
  There's lots of different features on that, you know what I mean? And then it's no different than getting a new controller. Like I was just over at the Copa booth with the E3, they got the new display. Like, so micro thermal had it 20 years ago, but now they're upgrading. Now you can see how, how they're running it now.
• 1:40
  This is the evolution. And what's cool about it now, I got something new to learn. It's not the same thing over and over again. Cause I've trained so many technicians, same as you like Trevor, it's the same every day, you know, you get into maybe a rut or just, it's just, I'm doing the same calls every day.
• 1:41
  Now it's exciting. They're like, man, so excited to work on a CO2 store. Like, it's different, it's more challenging, and now I can think more, I can think outside the box, I can have better conversation, just the same old things over, and this is what makes, what's making the industry get super excited.
• 1:42
  Rusty: And that's where you get your good tech, you know, I say there's technicians and part changers, and what makes a good technician is not the guy who goes, oh.
• 1:43
  I have to learn a new controller. It's the guy that says, Oh, I get to learn, I get to learn a new controller because that's where your juices get going, right? Give me, I'm, I'm now playing with my 880A with the touchscreen. I got fingers like, you know, like this. So I have to make sure every one of my ink pens has a stylus so I can tap on there and look at it and do all the things that we have to do.
• 1:44
  And it's exciting. So, so here's what I always say. If I want to know a technician, if I want to get a baby and I want to know if he's going to be a good technician. Here's what I want to do. I want to have somebody who has a lot of patience. I want to, I want to, I want that kid who wakes up every day and wants to solve the equation.
• 1:45
  Because if you break it down, what we do, we break, we solve the equation every day. You know, we've got parameters, known parameters and non known parameters. And we've got to put them in the equation and we come out hopefully with the right answer, right? So you've got to wake up every morning going, dude, I want to, I want to do something.
• 1:46
  I don't know how many technicians I run into second, third years, right? And they're 36 years old. I'm like, dude, where you been? Well, I got a, I got a master's degree in puppetry. Good for you. Right? But you can't make, some of these degrees we get, we can't make money in.
• 1:47
  Trevor: Yeah, and that's a big thing. And you, you said a good point back there.
• 1:48
  So, you said you got this new controller. A lot of times you're getting paid to learn how to do it. You just have to put a little bit of effort into it. Like, I know my wife and many of my friends, they, they have to take training without getting paid for it. You know, and they have to, every year, continue an education.
• 1:49
  I want to get into continuing education because I think that, that is going to be key to the success of the refrigeration industry. Right now, even in Canada, you can take your five year apprenticeship program, which is amazing. You know, you gotta, you gotta go through, it's either a block program or, or two months and then, uh, ten months of work.
• 1:50
  But the problem that I'm seeing is after you get your ticket You don't have to do any more training, okay? Or you get, you start in the industry with one company where all they make you do or let you do is change belts and flip filters when there's so much more to learn. Or you have a teacher who is not, doesn't know refrigeration, right?
• 1:51
  And so these are three different areas that I see that we need to work together to grow this. And it's an industry effort, right? So the first one is continuing education. What do you think about that, uh, in refrigeration?
• 1:52
  Rusty: So, I think it, the technology, it's refrigeration forever. Like we said in the very beginning.
• 1:53
  Never changed. We were the same Gangcocks, we were the same, you know, Paragon, we were the same, everything, right? Um, and now we've changed so rapidly, if we're not staying on top of it, and we're not continuing education, and that starts with the contractor. No, no, let me rephrase that. It starts with the individual.
• 1:54
  The dude has to say, look, I want to be better. I want to be, I want to know that. Then it takes the, the contractor, um, to say, yes, this is important. Yes, this is coming. Yes. CO2 it's different. Yes. I have new case controllers and I have to make sure my people, um, are up to speed. Now I'm lucky because I get to go out to these people and I get to spend a couple of days with them.
• 1:55
  They're going to forget 20%, remember 20 percent of what I said two weeks later. So that's why I believe, I believe the continuing education has to be there. We have to continue to have people come out and teach us, but we also have to augment that with online stuff. You know, let's just do, and break them in modules so I don't have to spend six hours.
• 1:56
  Right. Let's do separators. What's the difference between an impendment and a coalescence? Right. And just put that a nice little, like I was working with, uh, uh, contractor. Can I say their name? Triple A. I'm sorry. I was working with Triple A and what we were doing there for a while. And I would love to engage people now.
• 1:57
  Now that I'm in with NASRC, I would love to do this as well. We would do once a month. We would do a Saturday zoom call for Triple A. And the guys It was voluntary and um, but I had 50, 60 guys show up and we would just make it very, we would narrow the focus, right? Today we're going to do separators. Uh, one time we did super heat.
• 1:58
  I mean, cause when you really get into conversation of super heat, it really is, if you really want to understand it. You know, it's it's a zoom class. It's an hour and a half zoom class. He's and the next technician that says, I asked him about Super 8 and he pulls out his digital gauges and says, Oh, the Super 8 is 10.
• 1:59
  Yeah. But what that means? Well, it means it's 10. Yeah. No, no. What? It's 10. I'm like, all right, go to the truck. Right?
• 2:00
  Trevor: And that's why continuing education is so I believe is so key and we need to make it mandatory because right now it's that about voluntary. Good. Like the contractors who really understand that The industry straight changing.
• 2:01
  They need to have their technicians train. That's why so many people come to refrigeration vendor and I'm doing all these supermarkets CO2 training is because that they know the country knows that it's coming and they want to have their guys feel confident. There's no fear in going out to that store and be able to take more calls because I'm working with other contractors to say like Trevor, my technician just finished school, but they're not where they need to be.
• 2:02
  In the field. So now I'm paying them 40, 50, 60, wherever you're at that amount of money an hour, but they can't go and do the work that I need them to do for that wage. So now there's a disconnect between the school and the contractor and what's going on. So what do you think about the schooling system and how, cause I know you're going to be working more with the school system.
• 2:03
  How can we get it to a point where we have more of the right trainers in place? And what are, what are some of the things that cause it to get to this point? So.
• 2:04
  Rusty: And I can go into all different kind of areas and I, and I, you'd get banned. Um, but, um, the biggest problem I see with trainers in a lot of these tech schools, a lot of them, they come from one side of the sector, right?
• 2:05
  They don't, they're not supermarket people. And so that gets left behind. A lot of them are air conditioning guys. But here's what I think the key to train to the, to the tech school trainer. He's gotten this job. It's nice little job. Yeah. He's not on the call sheet, but he's not, he, he has to learn teaching definition of teaching is just showing other people what you have learned.
• 2:06
  Right. And, and, and if he, the teacher is not out there amongst it, learning CO2, you know, I've talked to a lot of teachers. Well, yeah, CO2 is not really a refrigerant. Right. Yeah, it is because they're not in the field anymore. Some of them are. Some of them are, but a lot of them are in this little gig at the tech school and they're not staying on their game.
• 2:07
  And if they're not on the top of their game, how do they expect the people coming out of their school to be on top of their game? And I'm not trying to despair anybody saying these are real things that you see happen.
• 2:08
  Trevor: No. And I've seen it all across the world the way it is and where, you know, refrigeration is like this, uh, you know, down the totem pole of to for technician for an exam.
• 2:09
  Ammonia technician even worse, you know what I mean? Like they have it even worse than us. Then it's the supermarket. And then, you know, cause the bigger you've got more residential equipment going in, you got more HVAC building, but we're in a smaller niche. And what I consistently see is that I see contractors trying to get their lead technician to become a trainer.
• 2:10
  Um, but the big thing that I see is, you know. You don't pay them as a technician. And this is why we don't see more technicians going into teach as well. Because I know, I know many guys like Trevor, I would love to go and teach, but I can't take a 40, 000 pay cut. Yeah. You know, so we need to really need to figure out how that we can pay the right people to do the right job, you know, because you can't take someone that's making 130, 140, 000 a year and say, here's 70, 000 a year.
• 2:11
  Oh, it's a work life balance transition. No, it's not a work life balance. This guy has knowledge, or this person, it could be a guy or a girl, has this knowledge that can share it with thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people. And I really think if we can start understanding how we can change that in
• 2:12
  Rusty: different ways.
• 2:13
  Yeah, I think it, I think the, the, the answer is there's not a single silver bullet. There never is. I love, I love making podcasts mandatory. I make, cause you know, um, uh, advanced refrigeration, they got good things going on. And, and I learned all about the K, KE2 or whatever. I didn't know. Um, but that augment that with online and have people like you and have the trainers.
• 2:14
  Let's force the trainers. And what about this? So let's say I have my PE, right? I'm a PE. Well, in order for me to maintain my PE. I have to do what? I have to take continuing education credits. So what if we say, hey, you want to stay, and I don't know how you implement this, the good contractor would, but if you want to stay a top technician and you want to continue to gain your top pay, you have to take so many learning credits per year from something sanctioned, something we approve, and then that forces them, it ties education to their money.
• 2:15
  Maybe that's what we do. Something like that.
• 2:16
  Trevor: Yeah. You know, I don't know. I think I know there's going to be a lot of change and disruption in the HVAC and refrigeration industry over the next 10 years. The way people are getting paid, the way, uh, the way the job is done. And I see it a lot of industry, not only here.
• 2:17
  And I think training is going to be one of the key things. One of the first thing is getting more people in. We're going to be able to do that. That's not going to be a problem. Uh, a lot of people are worried about it, but I know we're going to get more people in on that. The different. People that are investing the time, you know what I mean?
• 2:18
  Who want, who care about the industry? So I don't think the workforce development is going to be in the issue. I think us getting the continuing education and helping the people that are already in it, show them the love to get to their next level, that next succession area. Because a lot of contractors that I'm working with right now, I'm building plans for the first time career career paths, right?
• 2:19
  You know, so if you want to stay a technician for 20 years, you can't. Or if you want to stay a technician for 10 years, you want to get into project management, sales or even VP or operations, you know, I'm starting to build that with them where they never done that before. And this takes the, that transition scarcity out there because maybe you're a great technician in the field, but you're not the people person.
• 2:20
  So what do we do? Well, we work on that over a few years. So you, you know, you learn those skills. Everything's learnable. It's just skills, but they throw people in that don't have those skills yet. And then all of a sudden they're like, I'm out, out of the trade altogether. Now, you know, put that much stress on them or I'm back, back into the field.
• 2:21
  And then there's other people that just want to stay a technician and which is great and just, but they still want to continue to learn. And I can see, I see a lot of guys like it's the same thing. I'm going to just change companies to try to get, see if it's different on the other side. to see the new technology like CO2 or A2Ls and things like that.
• 2:22
  Rusty: I like what you said there about becoming product managers and stuff like that because I've dealt with a lot of product managers or whatever. They, they have to manage a product, but they're not from the trade. Yeah. Right? And so there's, there's something missing in what they're doing and what, and they have to learn that.
• 2:23
  And so if you could grow them from a technician who understands the conversation, that would be, that would be awesome.
• 2:24
  Trevor: I love that. And by far, like I worked at the manufacturer level, I worked in lots of different areas in refrigeration, and by far the best people in the manufacturing, or technicians, in refrigeration.
• 2:25
  By far. I've seen it, and I know it. So this has been really fun. Lastly, what do you see the next five years, what does that look like for the refrigeration industry? What, what do you, what do you want to accomplish in the next five years in the refrigeration industry?
• 2:26
  Rusty: I feel like I'm in an interview. Um, what are you going to do for the next five years?
• 2:27
  Um, no, what I see is we have to understand that what we do is not easy. It's, it's, but it's not one thing. You know, I'm not doing what, I'm not sitting there looking at a spreadsheet all day. I'm not sitting there writing emails every day. What I'm doing, I may wake up today And, and, and I may be working on an electrical thing or a, uh, this and that.
• 2:28
  And I see us opening that up and getting people back in touch. Back in touch, um, with, with their hands and, and, and connecting their hands to their mind, right? And, and so I can look at this and I can understand it. So I see us moving that ball forward where we're saying, Okay, dude, you have an opportunity here to put these two things together.
• 2:29
  And the coolest thing of all, when you, and there's not a technician out there that can't say this is true, when you walk in and a The store manager's freakin and peekin and ice cream's, your ice cream's now a milkshake, and you walk out, and it's solid hard again, and their milk is down to 34 degrees, there's not a technician on the planet that can't walk out and go, I did that.
• 2:30
  Cool. Yeah. Right? And, and that's what we need to teach, the satisfaction of the work. And I think if we reach people and say, dude, this is, I'm not looking at a spreadsheet, I'm not, I'm not picking on Excel, but, but, You know, get the gratification. That's what we don't teach. We don't teach that there's personal gratification when you walk out of that store and it's
• 2:31
  Trevor: working.
• 2:32
  Yeah, and this is where we talked about it earlier. It's like getting out to the public. We save people's lives. You know, blood banks. You know, our cell phones. We wouldn't even be talking here in this air conditioning building if it wasn't for refrigeration. And I think that's something that the public just doesn't understand.
• 2:33
  It's something we see here where we're at in North America every day. Like, we have it, and it's just something we take for granted. But now we gotta help the other people that don't understand what's going on in refrigeration really make a push on that. So, Rusty, how can people get a hold of you and your organization?
• 2:34
  Rusty: So, the easiest way, they can go to our website. Uh, NASRC website, or if they want to contact me, just, uh, rusty. walker at nasrc. org. And always remember the org part, because I even still type in com sometimes, so it is org. Uh, but yeah, feel free to contact me if you, you want questions about setting up programs, you want me to actually come out and do some training for you, I'm, I'm still doing that, so.
• 2:35
  Uh, yeah. Feel free to contact me. Awesome. so much, Rusty. All right. Thanks for having me.
• 2:36
  Trevor: I want to thank you so much for hanging out with me and the Refrigeration Mentor podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a comment. Let me know what were your key highlights, what you took away from myself or my guests as well as if you have not subscribed yet, head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and subscribe.
• 2:37
  And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. Let your friends know that there are people who care, who want to share the refrigeration information to help them get to the next level in their career. If you have not been to the refrigeration mentor website at refrigerationmentor. com, go check it out.
• 2:38
  There's a ton more guest podcasts I've been on, as well as the event page. Check out the events page because there's a lot more free trainings. As well as paid training to really help you grow your knowledge base. Super excited. Can't wait to see you at the next Refrigeration Mentor Podcast. Let's get a conversation going.