18-year-old rises to service advisor through Chariot Automotive Group’s training program

When joining the Automotive Technician Education Pathway (ATEP), Owen Montgomery was following his passion for cars, hoping to be a technician so he could repair vehicles. 

Shortly after starting the program, the 18-year-old Indianan's plans took a different route, as he rose quickly into leadership, later becoming the service advisor at the Chariot Automotive Academy location. 

“I ended up in a different position than I was originally going to get into,” Montgomery said. “A service advisor, that’s definitely a good step in my automotive career. It was just being here and seeing it is really what kind of helped me get into that.”

National Automobile Dealers Association estimates that the industry has a 37,000-per-year deficit in the number of new technicians needed to keep up with demand. 

Proactive approach: To attract young people to the profession and provide training, CAG started the Chariot Automotive Institute to give juniors and seniors in high school experience working in their service centers and earn college credit through Ivy Tech Community College. 

“It’s hard to maintain customer loyalty and retention and just have a good, healthy culture at work if you don’t have any technicians,” said Joe Ealy, Director of Operations at Chariot Automotive Group.

“We’re four years into the program. It starts with juniors and seniors in high school… They graduate high school with 35 credit hours in college, so they basically are a sophomore in college right after high school, which is pretty impressive. They roll into an apprentice program where they get to spend time in the shop.”

Efforts pay off: The dealership has enjoyed a high retention rate among the program’s graduates, with more than half of the technicians from the program. 

“I interviewed him, and it’s like we just got to get this guy in and let’s figure out how to make him work because it’s clear to me that he can be whatever he wants to be,” Ealy said. 

Matching of skills: Ealy calls the service advisor role one of the hardest at a dealership with its interaction with customers and the role it plays in building relationships. 

“This is a little bit more serious, especially with some of the work we’re doing. We’re getting up there with some big tickets because of the amount of technology there is on cars and the amount of effort it takes to get things repaired. It’s just helping people work through these big problems,” Montgomery said.

“I’ve learned something new every single day…It’s a very intricate position, especially when you’re writing up repair orders; there’s always something different that you might have to do for each customer…I definitely enjoy that. I like the challenge.” 

“You find someone and talk to them early, figure out if they’re really passionate about the industry, that really changes the dealership overall,” Ealy said. “The more people that love cars, love the automotive industry, it really makes a difference in how they perform in whatever their position is.”

“We can’t fix the whole technician shortage in Kokomo, Indiana, Tipton, Indiana, or Lafayette, Indiana. It’s got to spread, or it’s just going to keep getting worse.”