Our First Operator Training Course Drew Thirty-One Operators

Evening of November 23, Nairobi. Day two of the training had just ended, and thirty-one operators queued to receive their certificates. The last young man to get his held it up and asked me to take his photo; he said it was the first certificate of his life.

This was our first operator training. Two days, thirty-one people, not a cent charged. The night before flying home, I tallied the cost at the hotel: venue, materials, interpreter, refreshments, US$9,600 in total. Worth it or not? Read on.

Why We Ran This Training

The idea came this summer. From June to August, forty percent of the after-sales calls we received were not machines breaking; they were machines being broken by use.

Hydraulic oil overdue for changing. Clogged filters rinsed with water and put back. Full throttle the moment a cold engine fires. One customer in Kenya burned out his hydraulic pump four months after buying the excavator. The moment I saw the video, the oil was black as soy sauce. He said nobody told him the oil had to be changed at 5,000 hours. That pump, parts plus air freight, cost 12,000 yuan; the customer paid half and we paid half, and it hurt both sides.

Machines are ruined by use, not by driving. Many African operators learned as apprentices; they can operate, but they do not know maintenance. And we, the seller, are the ones who get cursed when the customer's machine dies young.

In October I told Chen Guodong: let's run a training in Nairobi. He asked, can you teach it? I said, you write the materials; I will do the talking.

When Mohamed heard we were doing a training, he called all the way from Dar es Salaam to ask whether we could hold one in Dar too. I said let's do this one right first, then talk.

Getting There Wasn't Easy

This trip was the company's first time sending anyone abroad this year. On November 8 I flew Guangzhou to Nairobi via Addis Ababa, masked for more than twenty hours straight, then a landing test and two days of quarantine observation. During those two days in the hotel room I went through the lecture notes four times.

The venue was found with help from our customer Joseph; he runs a repair shop in Dar es Salaam and knows people in Nairobi: an empty warehouse in a logistics park, US$400 a day. Local pandemic rules capped gatherings at fifty people; we held it to thirty-one trainees, plus our four staff, right at the line. Temperature checks at the door, masks handed out, nothing skipped.

What Two Days Covered

The materials were what Lao Li and I had assembled over three months: no theory, all cases, forty-seven real failures, each with photos.

Day one was diagnosis. What blue, white, and black exhaust smoke each mean. Where to look first when hydraulic functions slow down. What to do when each warning light comes on. No principles, just what you see, what to do first, and what never to do. When we got to never rev a cold engine, all thirty-one heads nodded in unison. Clearly, they had all done it.

Day two was maintenance. Change intervals for engine oil, hydraulic oil, and filters; which points to grease; how to adjust track tension. In the afternoon we moved to the yard with a real excavator, and all thirty-one took turns hands-on, guided by Lao Li's apprentice. One operator aimed the grease gun crooked and squirted grease all over his own sleeve. The whole yard roared; he laughed too.

The interpreter was a local Chinese, Xiao Li, working English to Swahili. The operators listened more seriously than I expected: more than twenty took notes on day one; on day two, everyone brought a notebook.

We printed thirty-five bilingual Chinese-English handouts; the four extra copies went to the local dealer. Lao Li was supposed to teach the mechanical part, but his visa did not come through, so his apprentice filled in. It was the apprentice's first time at a podium; on the first morning he was so nervous he drank six glasses of water.

Thirty-One People and Two Hundred Chapatis

One hundred and nine people applied. The venue could not hold them, so we selected down to thirty-one, priority to our customers' operators, the rest referred by others.

The tea breaks over the two days were chapatis and milk tea, cooked fresh by local ladies, more than two hundred chapatis over two days. Lunch was provided. One operator came by bus from Nakuru, over two hundred kilometers away, arriving the night before and sleeping at the bus station. When I heard, I slipped him the second day's travel allowance. He refused it; being able to attend, he said, was worth it already.

The graduation test was practical plus Q&A. Twenty-nine of thirty-one passed. Of the two who did not: one could not read, so the Q&A was impossible; we told him to come back next year. The other forgot to release the handbrake during the practical. Lao Li's apprentice said the kid was just nervous; normally he would be fine.

Why Not a Cent Charged

Someone asked me: why not charge tuition, even just a venue fee? I said no, for plain reasons.

One, the operators cannot afford it. Their daily wage works out to seventy or eighty yuan. A US$200 tuition would be two months of work for nothing.

Two, this money flows back. When operators learn maintenance, our machines live longer in their hands and break less. A customer whose machines last buys his next one from us. That math beats tuition.

Three, those thirty-one people will speak for us. Within a week of the training, six operators had already referred their bosses to ask about machines.

Session two is set for next March, again in Nairobi, forty seats. Operators in Kenya and Tanzania: have your boss contact us to sign up. Same as always: free, and lunch is on us.