Josh Carter, a senior technician at Emmets in Horsham, won John Deere's 2021 Technician of the Year award. The video features Carter discussing his career, his passion for the work, and how technicians support customers like long-time client Andy Delahunty who rely on skilled maintenance for agricultural machinery.
I think for a lot of us, we've fallen into the roles we've grown up with. Childhood interests, pulling things apart, working out how things work, breaking it, seeing if we can get it back together and that kind of stuff. And it just transitions into bikes or cars or trucks or tractors. And once we get a taste for it, it's sort of like developing a passion from there on in. I'm Josh Carter, I'm one of the senior technicians here at Emmets in Horsham. Been here for a little while now, probably 15 years with the company. So, yeah, been around a bit.
I've known Josh for 15 years. He started with Emmett in the parts area and then became a apprentice technician, working his way up to technician, then service manager and now he's a master tech. Techs play a vital role within our business. If we don't have good techs supporting our customers, we don't sell tractors. It's as simple as that. The reasons I nominated Josh was because he was standout in his field with his diagnostic ability. He's constantly working on not just his own problems that he's focusing on at the time, but he's actually willing to help anybody across the group. He shares all his knowledge and this is why we have him as a master tech within our business.
I think it's a massive honour and privilege to be a part of something so prestigious. Like the first annual Technician of the Year is a pretty amazing achievement in my book, so I'm really happy to be a part of it. But I think equally for me, it's about the recognition that all of the nominees have received from their dealerships. Like, there's some awesome guys out there and it's just great to see them being promoted in the public. And I think, yeah, it's as much about the dealerships recognising their talent as it is about any one particular person being good at what they do. So I think it was amazing. The most rewarding part for me is always watching the customer operate their machine after a successful day out. Whether it's fixing a breakdown, whether it's getting a pre season service done, no matter what, it is for us to see the customer happy with their equipment and operating as they plan to be. That's the most fulfilling thing for us. I've known Andy for probably my entire time at Emmetts, starting from, yeah, an apprentice, probably doing a few jobs on his farm, right through to field service. Up until now, we service the harvesters each year. We've helped set up spray equipment, we've sort of been through the whole rounds with Andy and the farm establishment and he's such a great bloke to deal with. So, yeah, it's been really enjoyable.
Andy Delahunty, grain farmer from Matoa and the Wimmera in Victoria. We do 2,000 hectares of cropping, so that's canola, wheat, barley, lentils and beans, and occasionally chickpeas. We met Josh when he started his apprenticeship at Emmert's at Rupania and we've dealt with him ever since. So it's got to be at least 10 years longer, I'd say. It's just really important to keep these machines operating at their maximum efficiency. So all the technicians are really important and have someone with Josh's expertise overseeing them. You're quite confident that anyone that set out is going to be looking in the right area for the problem solving.
I think for us and our customers, we need those guys as much as they need us. We love to support their products and we love to be the go to that they can rely upon. So if we can do our best to make sure we're there when they need us and we can keep their operation moving, then that's really important to us.
