Vaneza Zepeda learned the basics at her grandpa’s San Antonio auto shop, but it was inside a 40,000-square-foot diesel-engine garage that she built a career.
The 19-year-old turned an internship into a full-time job shortly after graduating from Southwest High School. Now, she spends her 40-hour workweek taking apart hydraulic mechanisms and repairing the mammoth machines used in construction and other industries.
“Every day is not the same,” Zepeda said. “You come in one way and leave better in some ways because you expand your knowledge.”
In high school, she joined a mechanics program and became an intern at Holt Cat, the San Antonio-based heavy equipment company. As a middle schooler, she’d already envisioned a life in mechanics similar to her grandfather’s.
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Few teenagers have that kind of resolve, but Holt is eager to catch the ones who do. It’s not easy to find diesel-engine technicians. That’s why the company has gone to great lengths to become expert in creating its own.
“There is an aging of the workforce, and a lot of those individuals are at retirement age,” said Mike Ramsey, executive director of the city of San Antonio’s workforce development office, Ready to Work. “That next generation is not there in the volumes needed to fill those roles.”
The heads of diesel garages say a combination of high school auto shop classes falling out of favor and a now decades-old culture shift to high schoolers focusing on four-year degrees has created a general lack of awareness that has fed the shortage.
At the same time, garages have a history of alienating about half their potential workforce: women.
By the numbers
St. Philip’s College diesel technician program, a Ready to Work partner, currently has just five students enrolled, according to Ramsey.
“We want to see that number increase,” he said. “There is a phenomenal opportunity that exists, and you’ve got several companies that are looking.”
Outside the Caterpillar machinery Holt specializes in, diesel technicians work on buses, 16-wheel trucks and farm equipment. Companies relying on those types of vehicles largely agree they’re struggling to fill technician roles — even the school districts’ own bus fleets.
The engines work differently from a typical automobile and require more specialized training.
The diesel tech industry needs to pull more than 177,000 new entrants nationwide into the field within five years to keep up with both growing demand and those leaving the career, according to a 2022 report from education nonprofit TechForce Foundation. But just 10,699 students completed postsecondary diesel tech training in 2021.
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Companywide, Holt is in desperate need of skilled labor from diesel technicians to welders, who make up more than two-thirds of its 4,300-person workforce. Currently, it has about 300 open positions.
That’s why it’s taking on training, creating opportunities so even those who have never touched an engine block can become apprentices and get paid as they learn.
“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, I don’t have any years of experience,’” said Maria Mendez, a team leader. “The good thing about Holt is we do offer pro-tech training, and that’s a lot of the basics. And then you move up to advanced classes.
“Then,” she gestured to the warehouse housing the shop, “you come out here and it’s more hands-on.”
Women in the workforce
When Zepeda started her internship, she wasn’t the only woman in the garage. As a full-time employee, her manager is fellow female tech Mendez.
Mendez graduated from the St. Philip’s program before quickly working up the ranks to her current management role at 27. Such moves are still new for the industry, said Brad Brown, a Holt service manager.
“A few years ago you’d never ever heard of a woman in a supervisory role in the shops,” he said. “We have to get more women in the workforce.”
Women make up just 3.7% of diesel technicians, according to the Women in Trucking Foundation, which raises funds for scholarships to help women get into the industry.
Holt says it’s working to address other barriers that keep women from joining their ranks, including access to child care. That’s something Ramsey said Ready to Work is also focusing on, taking part in a city-commissioned study that looks more closely at the impact child care access has on creating a skilled workforce.
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Holt says it offers a flex-spending account for working parents, as well as a service that helps them find child care.
“I was a young parent getting out of high school,” Mendez said, reflecting on what got her through the door. “I needed something that was going to make money quick.”
And Holt, she said, made it easier to quickly increase her skills and build a better life for her family.
The median salary for diesel technicians is about $54,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey of those actively in the field found about 35% were making more than $80,000 a year, according to a report commissioned by oil and gas company Shell.
Ultimately, the more visible women can be in the industry, the more others may see themselves in the same spot.
“If it’s for you, it’s for you,” Zepeda said.
Creating a pipeline
Brown said Holt’s close partnerships with schools and the local community college are helping them increase the number of women in technician roles.
While a recent job fair pulled in 72 potential employees, none was a woman, he said. Meanwhile, the female techs they do employ have all filtered through apprentice partnerships with schools or the community college.
In addition to Southwest Independent School District, Holt works with Madison High School and Judson High School in Converse. Those students can come to Holt to start learning the trade as juniors. The company provides on-the-job training and certifications so students don’t have to take on the costs of a two-year college after graduating to land a job.
Xavier Dominguez, 20, is another Southwest graduate-turned-Holt employee. Becoming a Holt intern meant a different kind of high school experience, he said, but with it came the entry point to a higher earning bracket than a lot of his peers.
“You have those people in high school who go party and whatever while you were always asleep early” because he had to be in the garage in the morning, he recalled.
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Employees like Mendez didn’t have any sort of exposure to mechanics in high school. It’s not something her campus offered. She remembers being drawn in after seeing big machinery on the roadside.
“I come from a small-town high school,” Brown said. “We had auto mechanics there. … But even in San Antonio, there’s some of these bigger dominant high schools that don’t have any programs like that.”
That lessens the odds of exposure. And that’s why Holt says it’s being vocal about the opportunity.
Other barriers
At the same time, the company says it’s working to identify barriers that may be keeping people from the field. As an example, Brown points to the cost of a diesel technician’s toolkit — a $7,000-plus expense at a time a beginner is making the least amount of money in their career. To get new techs over the hump, Holt will give the tools to new workers once they hit their two-year mark of employment.
In the same way a union will take on apprentices, Holt takes green hires and assigns them mentors and pushes them through three months of intense intro training.
Ramsey says the earn-as-you-go model is something Ready to Work sees as a key solution to San Antonio’s skilled-labor shortages.
“Employees have a role to play” in finding solutions, he said. “And Holt has done a phenomenal job trying to ensure young people have exposure and access as well as helping women see themselves in these roles.”
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It’s the kind of approach more companies need to take, especially as they stare down changing technology and growing employment demands, he said.
Brown and his technicians say they’re working to dispel stigma and answer questions.
Mendez points out that people shouldn’t worry they won’t have the strength to move around big parts — they have cranes on the ceiling that do most of the heavy lifting.
And Brown pitched a perk that every Texan has top-of-mind after this summer:
“The garage has air conditioning,” he said.
