Diamond Fleet Solutions

09/01/2026

These are the faces of the future of our industry.

This morning I had the opportunity to visit Arkansas State University-Newport and spend time with their Diesel Technology students, instructors, and leadership.

I met with Lindley Gilliaum, Associate Dean for Applied Sciences, and Diesel Technology instructors Garren Fears and Jesse Simmons.

The best part was speaking directly with the students pictured here.

These students are preparing to enter the industry with serious credentials. They’ll graduate with a Class A CDL, be DOT inspection qualified, earn their EPA 609 certification, and have the opportunity to pursue manufacturer-specific certifications through Kenworth, Freightliner, or International.

Garren does a great job proactively connecting students with employers. We also discussed how geography can sometimes make finding the right opportunities more challenging.

That’s where Diamond Fleet Tech Network can help extend their reach.

At no cost to the school or student, a Digital Technician Profile gives students a simple way to showcase their education, certifications, skills, tools, equipment experience, and career interests — making the application process more seamless and reducing traditional resume friction.

And the value doesn’t end with their first job.

These are career-long profiles. Five, ten, or twenty years from now, if one of these technicians needs help finding their next opportunity, DFTN is a platform they can lean on.

I reminded the students of something I hope they remember:

You’re sitting in the right seats.

The skills they’re developing are vital to transportation, infrastructure, agriculture, construction, and keeping America moving.

Lindley was also receptive to continuing the conversation and potentially connecting DFTN with ASU-Newport’s Marked Tree campus to reach their Automotive students.

This is what bridging the gap looks like to me: investing the time, getting into classrooms, listening to instructors, giving students better tools, and collaborating to expand opportunity.

Thank you Lindley, Garren, Jesse, and ASU-Newport for opening your doors — and thank you to the students for allowing me to spend part of the morning with you.

Career Profiles > Traditional Resumes.

08/30/2026

🔧 Real Tools. Real Skills. Real Opportunities.

Talk about some impressive school supplies. There’s something pretty cool about seeing a learning facility full of brand-new Snap-on toolboxes, especially when those toolboxes are headed into the hands of Gentry High School students learning a skill that can lead directly to a career.

Our Diesel Technology students, taught by David Williamson, have been issued their Snap-on toolboxes for the year, giving them professional-grade equipment to use as they learn the ins and outs of diesel technology.

And this is exactly why Career and Technical Education (CTE) matters.

Not every student’s path after high school looks the same, and it shouldn’t. Some students will head to a four-year university. Others will pursue certifications, apprenticeships, technical careers, military service, entrepreneurship or enter the workforce right after graduation. High schools should prepare students for all of those possibilities.

Gentry’s Diesel Technology program does just that. Housed in our 13,000-square-foot Career and Technical Education Center, the program gives students hands-on experience in a field where skilled technicians are in demand.

Many students who complete the program leave high school with practical skills that can help them step directly into the workforce.

And there’s a bigger story here, too. Gentry’s CTE programs are designed around a simple idea: learning doesn’t have to stop at the classroom door.

Sometimes the best classroom is a shop, a welding booth, a lab, or in this case, the driver's seat of a diesel-powered career.

Those Snap-on boxes aren't just toolboxes.

They're an investment in students, an investment in workforce development, and an investment in the future of our community.

08/28/2026

Good relationships don’t usually happen after one meeting. They’re built through follow-up, time, and a willingness to understand each other’s goals.

Today was my second meeting with Richie Roberts, Dean at OSU Institute of Technology, and that mattered.

Richie was already familiar with what we’re building through Diamond Fleet Tech Network, so this conversation wasn’t about introducing the idea from scratch. It was about going deeper.

We talked more specifically about how Digital Technician Profiles could help OSUIT’s Diesel, Automotive, and Heavy Equipment students present their skills, training, certifications, equipment experience, and career interests in a way that gives employers a clearer picture of who they are.

Richie saw the value and recommended that I meet with Assistant Dean Melissa Dreyer to discuss something much more meaningful:

Potentially incorporating profile creation into the new-student onboarding process.

Melissa was very open to the idea, and from there the conversation became even more collaborative.

We also discussed the possibility of creating an OSUIT-specific landing page that could house student profiles and make it easier for employers to browse and understand the technical talent coming out of the school.

That’s the kind of progress I get excited about.

There are miles driven. Fuel purchased. Time invested.

But these second and third conversations are where relationships start turning into real ideas and real action.

DFTN can’t improve technician visibility by itself.

It takes schools, instructors, career services teams, employers, and industry partners being proactive and willing to collaborate.

That’s how we make it easier for technicians to be seen and easier for employers to understand the talent in front of them.

Thank you, Richie Roberts and Melissa Dreyer, for the time, the conversation, and the willingness to keep moving this forward.

Career Profiles > Traditional Resumes.

08/28/2026

26 years in the industry — and he’s seen the technician shortage from just about every angle.

I had the opportunity to stop by Gentry High School and meet David Williamson (Diesel Instructor). I showed up cold, with no appointment, and David couldn’t have been more welcoming.

David has been in the industry since 2000 and told me that throughout those 26 years, there has always been some form of a technician shortage.

But our conversation went beyond simply saying, “We need more technicians.”

David has experienced the hiring friction himself.

He talked about applying for jobs and getting completely ghosted — never knowing whether his resume was the problem, something in the application screened him out, or whether anyone ever really looked at his experience.

He’s also started applications and simply stopped.

Long applications. Repetitive questions. Assessments. Paragraph after paragraph to complete before ever speaking with another human being.

Eventually, you get burned out and think, “Forget it.”

And this is coming from someone who is a Master ASE Certified Technician, has spent years as a working technician, and has served as a shop foreman.

That perspective is exactly why our conversation about Diamond Fleet Tech Network (DFTN) connected.

David immediately understood what we’re trying to remove: unnecessary friction between skilled people and opportunity.

Instead of asking a student or technician to recreate their career over and over through resumes and lengthy applications, a Digital Technician Profile gives them one professional profile that can grow with them throughout their career while making their skills and experience easier for employers to see.

David is excited about bringing DFTN to his students, and I’m excited about helping those students become visible to employers before they ever have to experience some of the same frustrations he has.

What impressed me most about David, though, is why he’s teaching.

After decades in the industry, he genuinely sees this as an opportunity to give back, develop the next generation, and help strengthen the technician profession as a whole.

He also recognized employers that have done a good job staying connected with his students and program, including Doggett Freightliner, Rush Truck Centers, and McKee Foods. Those relationships between employers and classrooms matter.

David, thank you for welcoming a stranger who walked into your shop and taking the time to have a real conversation about where this industry has been — and where it needs to go.

I’m looking forward to working with you and helping make the path from classroom → technician → career easier than it has ever been.

The technician shortage isn’t only a people problem. Sometimes it’s a process problem.

08/19/2026

This is exactly why we built it!

08/19/2026

ATTENTION DIESEL, AUTOMOTIVE & HEAVY EQUIPMENT TECHNICIANS

We built something specifically for you.

The Diamond Fleet Tech Network has developed a completely free Technician Profile Builder designed to eliminate the need to rebuild a resume every time you decide to explore a new opportunity.

Build your profile once. Keep it updated as your skills, certifications and experience grow. Have it ready whenever the right opportunity comes along.

This is especially for technicians who:

→ Hate building resumes

→ Aren’t actively looking today, but want to be prepared

→ Want a simple way to keep their experience and credentials current

→ Want less friction when it’s time to make a career move

No resumes. No applications. No cost to technicians.

Just a professional career profile that stays with you.

👇 Free profile creation link:
diamondfleetsolutions.com/create-profile

08/15/2026

Pro athletes don’t build resumes. Why should skilled professionals?

We don’t ask basketball players, football players, or any other athletes to build a resume before they get recruited. They are evaluated on who they are, what they can do, how they perform, and how they represent themselves.

So why are we still expecting diesel, automotive, and heavy equipment technicians to rely on resumes and long applications?

That process is archaic.

A resume only tells part of the story — and too often, it causes people to be judged by their past before they ever get the chance to explain it.

The truth is, there can be many reasons why someone leaves a job:

• culture
• leadership
• family
• life circumstances
• growth opportunities
• or simply a bad fit

If I were judged only by my past or by the mistakes I’ve made along the way, I may have never been given the opportunity to build anything meaningful.

That’s why I believe it should be the interviewer’s job to ask the right questions — to understand a person’s work ethic, mentality, thought process, and true nature — not just skim a resume and make assumptions.

At DFTN, we are positioning ourselves to help skilled professionals represent themselves more accurately and more completely while connecting them with employers.

In many ways, it’s the same role a sports agent plays for an athlete.

We need to start viewing skilled professionals the same way we view professional athletes:
as valuable talent worth understanding, developing, and representing well.

No resumes. No archaic applications. Just a better way for technicians to be seen for who they really are.

That’s the change DFTN is working to bring to the industry.

08/11/2026

NAFA’s FLEETSolutions magazine has published a three-page feature, “The Race to Recruit,” examining the technician shortage and the work Diamond Fleet Tech Network is doing to help address it.

The technician shortage is bigger than simply filling open jobs. It involves career awareness, pipeline development, hiring friction, technician visibility, training, culture, and retention.

One point featured in the article captures the challenge:

“We can’t recruit our way out of this by moving the same technicians around. We have to create more technicians, develop more technicians, and retain more technicians.”

Diamond Fleet Tech Network was built around a different idea.

Instead of asking diesel, automotive, and heavy-equipment technicians to repeatedly build résumés and complete applications, a technician creates one Digital Technician Profile that can grow with them throughout their career.

As they gain experience, certifications, OEM exposure, new skills, training, or different career goals, they update the same profile.

The goal is to change the traditional model from:

Find a job. Build a résumé. Apply. Wait. Repeat.

to:

Build your professional profile. Keep it current. Be visible for the right opportunities.

As the network grows, employers can identify technicians whose skills, experience, location, compensation expectations, and career goals align with what they need — allowing the right opportunities to come to the technician instead of always requiring the technician to start another job search from scratch.

That is the long-term vision behind DFTN: a career-long professional identity for technicians and a better visibility system connecting technicians, schools, and employers.

We appreciate NAFA and Carla Kalogeridis for giving this workforce issue meaningful editorial attention.

One Profile. More Opportunities.

08/10/2026

Fleet Maintenance recently featured Diamond Fleet Tech Network and the story behind the Digital Technician Profile.

The article looks at a question that has driven DFTN from the beginning:

What if part of the technician shortage is actually a visibility problem?

Talented technicians can have years of hands-on experience, certifications, OEM knowledge and equipment expertise that simply don’t translate well onto a traditional resume.

What’s also exciting is how much the Digital Technician Profile has evolved in just the few weeks since this interview.

The original profiles helped prove the concept. The next evolution is a more modern, professional profile built for technicians to own and update as their careers grow.

The technology will continue to evolve.

The mission won’t:

Make the value of skilled technicians visible.

One Profile. More Opportunities.

👇 Read the Fleet Maintenance feature below.

When fleet maintenance supervisor Sean Carson realized how hard it was for techs to market their skills, he created a platform to build their resumes and help fleets find the ...