Franklin Ford Donates SUV to Tri-County’s Auto Tech Program

FRANKLIN, MA – Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School is pleased to announce that Franklin Ford has generously donated a Ford Edge SUV to the Tri-County Automotive Technology program to assist with advanced curriculum.

With a shortage of qualified technicians, service departments around the country have been scrambling to find new talent. Ford Motor Company recognized the labor shortage in the industry and decided to do something about it. Last September, Ford started the TechDrive Program throughout the United States. Each Ford Regional Talent Placement Specialist was challenged with building partnerships with their region’s Ford Dealerships that have an automotive technician shortage and connecting them with local technical high schools.

Tri-County has been chosen as one of the Technical High Schools to take part in the TechDrive Program. Franklin Ford has agreed to sponsor Tri-County, with the expectation that the partnership will fulfill their technician hiring needs. As part of the TechDrive Program, Ford has furnished Training Modules to Tri-County students.

“With the automotive technician shortage, we’ve had to create innovative ways to find, hire, train and keep service techs,” said Frank LaMonica, Fixed Operations Manager at Franklin Ford. “We are pleased to have partnered with Tri-County in the TechDrive Program. We hope the Tri-County students will enjoy working on the car in order to prepare them for future career opportunities. Here at Franklin Ford, many of our automotive technicians are graduates of Tri-County. We look forward to hiring more in the future.”

“Our goal is to build the relationship between Education & Industry, and for Ford Dealers to have a pipeline of quality automotive technicians,” said Michael Nixon, Regional Technical Talent Placement Specialist at Ford Motor Company. “With 15 dealerships within my region, finding new ways to hire qualified service technicians has been a challenge. Hopefully, the TechDrive Program will help our dealerships to fill that shortage in technicians.”

“Our students in the Auto Technology program can’t wait to reverse engineer this vehicle,” said Superintendent Stephen Dockray. “We are thankful and honored to have been given the Ford Edge and are looking forward to our students gaining the knowledge and critical thinking skills required to meet the growing demands in the automotive industry.”

Tri-County RVTHS, located at 147 Pond Street in Franklin, is a recipient of the High Schools That Work Gold Achievement Award and serves the communities of Franklin, Medfield, Medway, Millis, Norfolk, North Attleboro, Plainville, Seekonk, Sherborn, Walpole, and Wrentham.

Pictured in Photo: (L-R) Sean Roddy, Service Manager at Franklin Ford handing the title to Bill Robin, Instructor at Tri-County.

Students Standing: (L-R) Tyler Goddard of Plainville, Connor McCarthy of Franklin, and Joe Carneiro of Franklin

Students Kneeling: (L-R) Ja’Liyah Westgate of Seekonk, Bruce Alberta of Seekonk, Angel Velez of North Attleboro, Ava Bradley of North Attleboro, David Grace of Seekonk, Conner Randall of Plainville, and Meredith Paris of Seekonk.