Ask Jim Cook for reasons collision repair owners should work with high school technician training programs, and he’ll give you eight. Or 12. Depends on how long the call goes.
Ask Chris Hudson, and he might reach across the miles to grab your shirtfront and ask, “Why the heck not?”
Cook leads technician training at Ogden High School in Utah, where he’s taught for 20 years, after 15 with Job Corps/United Auto Workers students. At SEMA Show 2025, he won the first Jeff Wilson Award.
Hudson directs collision work for auto dealership group Young Automotive Group, with “16 service drives … 40 rooftops total” in Utah and Idaho “and soon to be Montana.”
“We’re the link that supplies their employees,” Cook said. “Where are they going to find someone to hire, without supporting the high schools?”
Eight reasons, give or take
Now there’s a lot underneath, wrapped up in, and crowning that notion, because of course there are many places to find a body tech, if all you’re looking for is a body.
He means someone passionate about the work, seeking a career, taught well on the best equipment, and with no bad habits learned at other jobs. Kids these days are taught not just technology but also art: maturity, personal relationships, caring for gear.
“We listen to our advisory boards and community, and they’re employable for what’s locally needed,” Cook said, including so-called soft skills: “attendance and tardies, and we’re very, very strict on respect for tools.”
“Set these kids up before they get to those employers,” Hudson said — and the emphasis is his. “Some of this is how to interview, show up on time, dressed well.”
Cook calls these “employability skills,” and nobody beats that local high school a few miles away to, first, find an apprentice and, second, keep ’em. And when there’s a later need — it’s a job; these are people; it will require an ongoing relationship — Cook comes alongside shop and staffer to smooth that stretch of road.
“We want a technician who will show up and be useful to a shop,” Hudson agreed.
Want more? Cook’s kids don’t job-hop. Some of the kids have parents, or only one, with multiple jobs. They want to learn a trade and live it: “Work one job, make good wages,” Cook said.
One kid he worked with 30 years ago under the Job Corps umbrella just retired from the shop where he began decades ago. Over the years, he’d hired other students from Cook’s captaining.
Quit complaining, get involved
Hudson’s on board here. He’s hired three of Cook’s students into collision repair; others join Young in extreme accessories — vinyl wraps, say — and the dealership group also has, well, dealerships, including powersports.
He recounted realizing, in a conversation with an equipment rep at a regional conference, that when a shop says, “Someone should do something” about tech training, “that’s us. Be a founding father and change this.”
So he did.
Young Automotive Group gave a $42,000 top-of-the-line welder to Cook’s program and helped revise, revamp, and modernize its materials for “the latest and greatest repair procedures, ADAS, … understanding metallurgy, and ensur[ing] they have skills shops need,” including the big ones that hire the most.
“Collision is for-profit; we don’t have a week to fix a fender,” Hudson said. Vendors got involved and giving continued, even if it was something someone was tossing out.
“Didn’t cost a lot to make sure they have parts to work on, practice dent-pulling, things to paint,” he said. “We put our money where our mouth is, not because it made us money or gave us technicians — it’s the right thing to do.”
Shops should “say, ‘Yes, we will show up; we’ll help with interviewing,’” Hudson continued. “And we have no monopoly on this: Once the word gets out, we’re hoping people in other parts of the country will get on board.”
“Be involved with the technician, but more so — be involved with high school,” Cook added.
Find your path, make the call
“We’re the only high school in the [state’s] northern area with a collision repair,” Cook said, referring to Weber and Davis counties. The nearest tech schools are in Salt Lake. People in his program want to be there, need to be. It tweaks the common high school phenomenon of star players transferring to get noticed in school sports.
“We get boundary waivers,” he said. “Students come to Ogden High School because of the training available.”
The education pathways he offers them: course variety, business partnerships, “skills and certifications” with I-CAR and ASE, transfer credit to higher ed. Cook’s literal signature line: “The expert in anything was once a beginner.”
Young Automotive’s support continues, including once paying for graduates to spend their first night as former high schoolers in a safe environment at a local fun center.
With time, talents, and treasure from the collision community, Cook also applies for and gets Collision Repair Education Foundation (CREF) grants. This year was $5,000 for a dent-pulling system. The Jeff Wilson Award is for “selfless education,” now a daily dance among shops, vendors, students, and teachers.
Cook added, “I don’t think a high school program can ever be successful without support from the school board, administration, counselors. They get it: This is a chance to get high-paying jobs.”
Hudson said, “We’re all in this together.”
The message: If collision repair doesn’t “vote early, vote often” on apprentices, where is your next production manager being trained? At a shop you wouldn’t send your enemy’s dog to?
All told, there should be a dozen or so reasons here for body shops to act. Need more? Just call Jim or Chris.
If Hudson’s available, put him on speaker. Get you some distance between his passion and your pullover.
Paul Hughes