State Farm donations keep auto collision repair training on the cutting edge.
THE FIRST TIME Christine Brasington saw the totaled Ford Taurus sitting in her school's auto collision lab, she admits to being more than a little intimidated.
She didn't know that the almost new car, which was recently donated to Albany Technical Institute by State Farm Insurance Company, would help pave the way for her future line of work.
The taupe car had been struck twice in a car's weakest places: once on the front right corner and again on a rear corner. The impact smashed the entire front end and then crumpled the passenger side from bumper to bumper. Looking at it from the front, the centerline of the car had been shoved a good 10 inches to the right. Brasington's instructor, Bill Underwood, put it more succinctly.
"It was mangled," he said.
"I didn't have a clue about what to do when I first looked at it," said Brasington, 27, who now works as an assistant painter at a Leesburg, Ga., auto body shop. "I remember being scared to touch it."
But using the high-tech tools in Albany Tech's sophisticated lab — a laser alignment system, a Kansas jack rack, a computerized paint-matching system and a special dust-free painting booth — Brasington helped take the car apart and put it together again. She ran diagnostics and replaced the car's airbags, pulled the badly damaged frame back into shape, wrote repair estimates on the damage and ordered new parts.
"It was just incredible what I learned working on that car," she remembers now, more than a year later. "That was a fabulous opportunity to learn how to do major structural repairs and painting on damaged, late-model cars. And that's important, because that's what you work on in real life."
The Department of Revenue inspector, who carefully checked the Taurus for safety before retitling the car, declared it one of the finest repair jobs he'd ever seen, Underwood said.
Less than a year into her new job, she already earns $25,000 annually and her boss, another Albany Tech graduate, makes more than twice as much. Brasington, recognized as the best Albany Tech student in 1996 and a finalist in Georgia's GOAL (Georgia Occupational Award of Leadership) competition, has set her sights higher.
"I felt like a winner," she said of the experience working with the Taurus. "I like my job and someday down the line I'll be head-painter."
Brasington couldn’t have had that experience at all, though, if not for a partnership between the Department of Technical and Adult Education and State Farm Insurance. Each year, that partnership brings at least a half dozen damaged, yet nearly new, cars to the students who need them most: the next generation of Georgia automotive and collision repair technicians.
A Public-Private Partnership
The donation program arose out of discussions between State Farm property claims trainer Ron Lay and Larry Little, director of vocational programs at Dalton College.
A former estimator, Lay realized that if Georgia's repair shops kept up-to-date, they could repair damaged cars his company would otherwise be obliged to write off as total losses.
About six years ago, while traveling around the state, Lay began to notice something interesting. As skilled as their technical institute instructors were, trainees were still confounded by the latest auto innovations — advances such as anti-lock brakes, digital dashboards and the newest airbags.
The reason? It's hard — and expensive — to find exactly the right cars to work on, so instructors were depending mostly on students’ vehicles or whatever else came through the door. And on the occasions when new and late-model cars were available, students didn't have access to the same quality of paint and materials used in private practice.
"These kids' prior experience consisted of restoration projects on older cars — '68 Camaros and '57 Chevys. That's what they knew the insides and outsides of," Lay said.
Knowing that State Farm auctions hundreds of salvageable cars each week, he and Little devised a plan to channel a few totaled ones each year to the technical institutes instead of the auction blocks. State Farm management quickly approved the deal. In a 1992 meeting of DTAE and State Farm representatives with Gov. Zell Miller, Miller was handed the keys to the first donated vehicle.
| The Ford Taurus donated by State Farm was repaired by students in Albany Tech's collision repair program. (Photo/Albany Tech) |
Then, working as an intermediary, the Georgia Fund passes the cars on to the local foundation at a technical institute on a rotating basis, using geographical criteria and a competitive process — shops must meet certain quality guidelines — to apportion them out.
"The technical institutes show us that their labs and instructors are qualified," said Roger Slater, the DTAE assistant commissioner who oversees the Georgia Fund. "Each instructor has to prove he or she knows how to fix a late-model car and that all the proper equipment is available."
To date, State Farm and other insurance firms have donated 17 vehicles. The average car comes in the door with $5,000 to $10,000 worth of damage and is worth just a fraction of its original value. But it often leaves worth $12,000 or more. The Georgia Department of Revenue inspects the finished product for safety, and a title is reissued to the local foundation. The local foundation obtains liability coverage, then leases each vehicle back to the technical institute for a period of time.
"We don't give away Jaguars or Cadillacs," Lay quipped. "We donate what is an average car commonly out there on the road today. The idea is to give students experience on cars they'll be working with in real life."
For his efforts, Lay was honored by a resolution at the State Board of Technical and Adult Education board meeting last March.
Model of Fiscal Responsibility
One remarkable facet of the auto donation program is the creative use of resources.
The technical institutes' auto collision programs, for example, benefit from the eventual sale of their repaired vehicles. When an institute's local foundation executes a sale, the proceeds go in a specially earmarked fund to pay for the next round of repairs, perpetuating part of its program's funding.
Truck-driving students at area technical institutes haul donated technical institutes, gaining credit toward truck driving certification and saving the cost of paying private haulers.
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Albany Tech instructor Bill Underwood (second from right) takes measurements and shows students (left to right) Mike Arline, Lanoris Mingle and Jesse Freeman how to use a Kansas jack rack to pull out the bent frame of this Mercury Marquis. (Photo/Bread & Butter Studio) |
But the value goes beyond dollars and cents. Observers also tout the real world experience students get while working on them.
"The average person looks at one of these vehicles and says, 'There's no way it can get fixed,’" said Underwood, Brasington's auto collision instructor at Albany Technical Institute. "Then we go and do it. MY students have a dire need to work on late-model vehicles, and State Farm is doing us one heck of a service by getting these complicated, late-model repair jobs in here."
"We can teach an entire curriculum — a year and half’s worth of education — on one vehicle."
That means the entire process is undertaken, start to finish: from inspection and damage assessment to measuring alignment with frame machines; from brake work to welding sheet metal structures into place on the vehicle body; from suspension and electrical work to repainting and careful installation of airbags. Using the latest model cars ensures that students will stay on top of the newest developments in auto manufacturing.
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Each year, the latest car models feature new twists, such as a global positioning system — which shows a car's location on a map by using satellite technology — or recently developed adhesives that glue parts together.
Such up-to-date knowledge turns out to be useful for graduates like Brasington once they hit the job market. Underwood points to a nationwide shortage of bodyworkers as proof. "We are 20,000 qualified collision technicians short, nationwide," he said, noting that the average Georgia bodyworker earns $40,000 to $60,000 annually after just five years on the job. "Calls come in to this program for help all the time. The need is there. It is just a matter of getting students interested and then of training the workforce."
In Albany Tech's paint mixing room, instructor Robert Rogers (center) teaches Palanthia Davis (front) and Mike Arline (back) to use a computer to match colors of a car that will be painted and to determine the formula for properly mixing the pigments.
More Cars Down the Road
"This is a win-win situation," said Lay, currently a corporate instructor at State Farm's headquarters in Bloomington, Ill. "We wouldn't have been able to repair those cars without the technical institutes’ help. And this helps keep our policyholders' premiums down, while ensuring that they drive safer cars. "It all goes to prove what I've been saying all along," he said. "That training doesn't cost, it pays." Paul Karr is award-winning author and writing consultant. |
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