'22 ACE Award Winner: The Detroit Garage

In a few sentences, please tell us about the educational or professional  development program(s) implemented by your company.   

The Detroit Garage has always put a strong emphasis on education and professional development. As a company that employs many technicians across a wide range of experience levels, we have found it to be a necessity to give these employees a “education and career path.” ASE has done a great job breaking down the different service categories, but we found that employees benefited from an assessment and a more granular training agenda to help them achieve the confidence to take the tests.  

Why did your company decide to make this investment in education? 

This reminds me of a good saying; “What if we invest in training for this employee and they leave the company?” compared to, “What if we don’t invest in training and developing our employees and they stay?” As the Detroit Garage Auto Family of shops continue to grow, we strive to also lead our team members to personal success and cater a career path for them, providing all the resources needed to master their trade. It is undoubtably a win-win situation as a more educated, developed and experienced technician not only earns better wages, but also brings tremendous amounts of additional value to our organization and our customers. 

What positive impacts have you found from investing in education? 

With our investments and focus on education, we have watched firsthand the impact it has had on the next generation of professional technicians and other staff members. Again, as we grow and add additional facilities, it is priceless to be able to take an experienced team member and allow them to help share their skill sets with the new team members from our additional location acquisitions. Another positive impact is our ability to proudly display the ASE Blue Seal of Excellence at all our locations. This is only achievable when all are pulling together to stive for education, training and a commitment to service excellence. 

What does winning the 2022 ACE Award mean to your company? 

 

Winning the ACA 2022 ACE Award is a humbling achievement that further embraces that our focus on developing the professional automotive technician is getting noticed. There are many staff members who are now able to better provide for their families due to our focused efforts; that is a really cool feeling. We will continue the technical development and also continue the important fight for consumer and legislative education in the utmost importance of our right to repair battles so that we can keep servicing our customers and clients well into the future.