Last week’s second quarter conference call with Penske Automotive Group resonated several commonalities with other public dealer groups in the country, primarily the continued search for qualified automotive technicians.

The group’s chairman and chief executive officer, Roger Penske, noted that although his company is not as affected by recent recalls, with only 4 percent of their total sales coming from the domestic manufacturers, Penske is still on the hunt for technicians.

“I would say the right technicians are in tight supply,” Penske said. “We’ve added 200 technicians in our network over the first six months. 

“At the moment, I’d say we probably need a couple hundred technicians. We’ll go through that on a very selective basis for the balance of the year.”

While AutoNation continues its massive search and Asbury Automotive Group continues to develop its own in-house development program, Penske leans on its partnership with one of the biggest automotive training schools in the nation.

“One thing we’ve done for a number of years, we’ve had a very strong relationship with UTI, Universal Technical Institute,” Penske said. “They generate about 18,000 technicians a year that they graduate.”

With locations near major cities all over the country, Penske enjoys the accessibility of UTI’s graduates.

“What we do is, we go in and we interview the best technicians and, in many cases, some OEMs have special programs where they particularly train in a step course where they go one level up and they train specifically on an OEM,” Penske said. “So what we’ve done, not only in the truck leasing business, that’s where we have diesel and we need them, we’ve used them as a resource and we’ve got some really good candidates, and I would say that would be our biggest area where we’re gaining candidates.

“And, to me, people coming out of UTI seem to be really good guys to start. Technicians are hard to get; a lot of our guys retire that have all of the expertise so it’s important to grow the space.”

When asked about the advances in technology and the viability of smaller, “mom-and-pop” repair shops, Penske hinted that the future will likely lean in favor of the dealers, who have a far-higher capacity to handle the tech-heavy computer systems of modern vehicles.

“I think we’re going to go through a sea-change here; the technology is growing leaps and bounds over the last four or five years, and as these cars get into the market and are resold, I think they’ll be a real opportunity and increase our customer pay as we go forward,” Penske said. “Also, the availability to have the codes and to have the expertise. We send our technicians to these OEM schools regularly in order to keep them at pace of the technology so I think it bodes well for the retail auto business and the OEM franchise dealers as we go forward.”