Liam Gee, a construction and forestry technician from New Zealand, won the 2024 Service Technician of the Year award. He talks about his career path, his passion for machines, and what it takes to succeed as a technician.
The best part about being a John Deere technician would be the wide variety of work you carry out. One day you could be in the workshop carrying out a repair, the next you could be two hours away in the forest fixing a machine on a breakdown. I'm Liam G. I'm a construction and forestry technician at Drummond Etheridge in Blenheim, New Zealand. Growing up, I always liked machines. Grew up around dad, hit trucks and diggers and stuff and always liked working out how things worked. So approached my local branch manager and turned into work experience and then a few months. That was an apprenticeship and I've been there ever since. Techiworld's experience has been great. Met a heap of cool new people, learned a few new things as well. The winner of the 2024 Construction Forestry Service Technician of the Year for New Zealand is Liam Gee from Drummond and Etheridge in Glena. It's an honour and a privilege to be here today to receive this award. I never really thought to be something that happened. To be honest, it feels amazing, like quite shocking actually, just to thank the people that have helped me get here. Like there's been a lot of people behind the scenes that have helped, whether that's service managers, branch managers, other techs in the dealerships and stuff like that. Some goals would probably be to just gain more knowledge on more machines. The machines will always be evolving, so keeps us on our toes. If someone was thinking about becoming a John B Tech, I'd say don't be afraid to take chances. Like, if the opportunity is there to try something, something new, give it a go, because it may lead to something exciting.
