Caleb Dover, a third-year apprentice parts technician at Midland Tractors, won the John Deere Australia New Zealand Apprentice Parts Technician of the Year award. The video features Dover alongside local farmer Shane Radford and group parts manager James Barker, showing how his work supports farmers in the region.
My name's Caleb Dover and I'm a parts technician here at Midland Tractors. My main role is to make sure customers get the parts they need to keep their machinery running. I remember going to agricultural shows as a little kid and I went around and I saw the historical machinery. I knew that I wanted to be in the agricultural machinery sector and I sort of hadn't really heard of being a parts technician as a job before. I hadn't really thought about it but I saw it and I read what the job entails and I thought that sounds like a pretty good fit. I started Midland Track Descent and currently a third year apprentice as a parts technician. Dane is a local farmer down here at Moriarty and he mainly does cropping. So at the moment he's got spuds in just a real nice customer and he's good to deal with and he loves his John Deere so it's really good to be able to see Shane's business up and running because of the work we do. So I drive past his place and it's nice to be able to see the crops in his field growing and he's doing a good job and know that he does rely on us to keep that happening.
My name is Shane Radford, we're here at Moriarty Tasmania. If you have a breakdown nowadays you can lose a lot of money pretty quick. It's important to get things going as quick as you can. There's always a sticky situation where you can't quite find what you need and Caleb is straight onto it and he can nearly read your mind. That's great. Caleb seems very passionate. You can tell by the way he talks and how he explains things. If he says he'll do something he will definitely do it and says he'll get back to you. He'll definitely get back to you.
Hi, I'm James Barker, I am the group parts manager at Midland Tractors. Caleb fulfills a really critical part of the business. He's a great young guy, super keen in the industry, loves machinery and tractors. He just wants to help the customer as much as he can. He just lives and breathes it. He loves it. It was an easy choice for us to make to nominate him.
I won the award for John Deere Australia New Zealand Apprentice Parts technician of the year and that's been a very big thing. I didn't ever think I'd be able to achieve something like that. Being recognised in that way has been very special. So I'm proud to work for John Deere.
